This holiday season, Nintendo's retro gaming console, the NES Classic, is expected to be a big hit. It went on sale on Friday, November 11, at retail stores and it sold out in merely minutes.
Stores such as the Eastport Plaza Walmart in Portland, Ore., carried a limited number of stocks that were gone immediately. With a standard retail price of about $60 or $70, if an additional controller is purchased, and 30 classic Nintendo games preloaded, it is no wonder that the diminutive console flew off the shelves so quickly.
With such a high demand for the product and an even lower supply, it comes as no surprise that sellers are taking advantage of this hot item craze. Many sellers are using the high demand to up the price from $60 to somewhere between $200-$300 on sites such as eBay, and third-party Amazon sellers. Customers have reacted to the shortage in NES Classic supply by giving a 1.5-star rating on Amazon (at the time of writing).
Despite the rating, people are still scouring the web in hopes of being able to purchase the nostalgia-inducing console. This calls into question whether Nintendo took into consideration this alarming amount of demand. The company should have learned a valuable lesson from its previous experience like the near-impossibility of finding the original Nintendo Wii when it was released.
Regardless of whether Nintendo took heed to its previous experience, or if it is doing anything to remedy the situation, one thing is for certain, scalpers and resellers will look to make a quick buck on the coattails of this trend. One such reseller has reportedly been able to sell an NES Classic for as high as $5000 on eBay. This kind of shopping frenzy brings back memories of when the Tickle-Me-Elmo came out, as it catered to a younger market.
Nintendo's latest device is a toy, but this time, its target are those that are 40 years old and above. These are the customers who are old enough to see the original NES Classic release, and Nintendo is banking on nostalgia.
Those who are looking to buy the NES Classic will have to look hard, and they must be willing to shell out more than just the sticker price of $60.