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SNES Mini

Started by buntyman, September 26, 2017, 04:01:18 PM

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biggytitbo

There was that old debate about the Atari Jaguar and whether it was really a 64 bit machine (when such things mattered) because it had 2 32 bit processor and a 64 bit data bus. Those were the days!

NoSleep

It had Tempest 2000; that was the only number that mattered.

biggytitbo

The version of Doom on the Jag was good too, programmed by John Carmack himself. Most of the subsequent console ports were based on that rather than the PC version.

Sebastian Cobb

A mini dreamcast would be a good way of pushing an underrated console with some good games to a wider audience. Although given you can still pick up dc's quite cheap and easily just burn games for them, i dunno.

MikeShaft

There's something about having these games on a console which is making me play them for far longer than I ever have an emulator. Like when you would rent a single cartridge and play it obsessively till it clicks. Me and a mate had a great time working out just what was going on in some odd Kirby golf like game included on it. By the end it was amazingly tense. Can't wait to play that again. Apart from Super Ghosts and Ghouls. Far too hard.

biggytitbo

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on October 07, 2017, 02:49:41 PM
A mini dreamcast would be a good way of pushing an underrated console with some good games to a wider audience. Although given you can still pick up dc's quite cheap and easily just burn games for them, i dunno.


A plug and play mini dreamcast would be great, although not sure how much of a shit Sega give, they seem happy to let any old company use their name on cheap chinese tat.

Kelvin

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 07, 2017, 03:44:41 PM

A plug and play mini dreamcast would be great, although not sure how much of a shit Sega give, they seem happy to let any old company use their name on cheap chinese tat.

Sega released a mega-drive packed with games before Nintendo released the mini-NES, didn't they?

biggytitbo

Quote from: Kelvin on October 07, 2017, 03:46:27 PM
Sega released a mega-drive packed with games before Nintendo released the mini-NES, didn't they?


I don't think its Sega themselves that does those though, they're just happy to let anyone make cheap clone consoles it seems.

Spiteface

It's not Sega themselves.

They're also a bit shit. Sound-wise especially. But you can plug actual Megadrive cartridges into them and play those if the thing you like isn't actually pre-loaded onto it.

rue the polywhirl

I've been getting really pissed off by this. I just want to order it through John Lewis so I can claim an £80 voucher against it. Why can't they just make em so they don't get sold out before they get released. Anyone got one to sell? I'll trade it with a Penis Mini.

Replies From View

Quote from: rue the polywhirl on October 08, 2017, 02:57:15 AM
Why can't they just make em so they don't get sold out before they get released.

You'd think Nintendo would want to make loads of money from selling enough of these to satisfy demand, but apparently not.  Apparently they're keen for third party sellers to profit from them instead.

Shay Chaise

They're making them as fast as they can, obviously. That's why they stopped making the NES. Remember, they're also trying to manufacture the fastest selling console on Earth to keep up with unprecedented demand. People are still queueing round the block in Japan to collect a ticket to have a chance to buy a Switch. The fact is that the people who most wanted one took steps to make sure they would have one. It's a vastly improved situation compared to the Mini NES.

hewantstolurkatad

I still think it's in their interests to not quite satisfy demand, the biggest thing these have going for them is the hype regarding the shortages.



The Switch is another thing entirely though, they need to be getting as many into people's hands as possible; next year isn't gonna have a Zelda/Mario. Probably a nightmare to orchestrate gathering all the parts for a switch though.

Kelvin

In the US it's apparently much easier to get one of these in stores, rather than online, so maybe try that if you're struggling.

gmoney

Quote from: hewantstolurkatad on October 08, 2017, 10:47:51 AM
I still think it's in their interests to not quite satisfy demand, the biggest thing these have going for them is the hype regarding the shortages.


This is how they market absolutely everything, and pretty much always have.

biggytitbo

Considering Nintendo have done this 'stock shortage' thing time and time and time again, we can only really think its a deliberate tactic. To bring out products people really want then make sure a lot of people won't be able to buy them is shitty behaviour and they should be called on it. Nintendo get away with so much bad stuff because they make good games, just look at the way they behave on youtube which would probably sink most other companies.

Shay Chaise

They would sooner create demand than have excess stock of a limited run product. No shit. And they're called out on it constantly. Once demand slows, they'll kill it. Good. It's a novelty item, their focus should be on the Switch, and it is.

As I say, people who really wanted one were able to get one. It wasn't that hard. I got one by walking into a supermarket and I didn't even want one.

Steven

SNES Mini?? Don't you idiots see? They've just re-released the SNES, and since you're not a tiny child any more it looks a lot smaller!

MUGS.

Gurke and Hare

Quote from: Shay Chaise on October 08, 2017, 10:39:21 AMPeople are still queueing round the block in Japan to collect a ticket to have a chance to buy a Switch.

Is this just a Japanese thing. It looks like I could have one tomorrow if I wanted. Perhaps I will, that'll show those Japanse.

Replies From View

Quote from: Shay Chaise on October 08, 2017, 10:39:21 AM
They're making them as fast as they can, obviously.

Hmm.  As yet no sign of new stock anywhere in the last several months since the SNES mini went on pre-order and sold out.  Nintendo aren't a tiny company, and could be whacking out thousands of these a week, but have presumably instead been sitting on their hands until this Tuesday.  There's something almost perverse about how they're withholding stock so that people have to go to third party ebay sellers where they have to pay three times as much to anything that isn't Nintendo.

Replies From View

Quote from: hewantstolurkatad on October 08, 2017, 10:47:51 AM
I still think it's in their interests to not quite satisfy demand, the biggest thing these have going for them is the hype regarding the shortages.

But it's the third party wankers who make the money from overpriced resales, though.  That's what I don't understand about Nintendo's brilliant tactic.  I don't personally give a shit about Nintendo's profits.  I'm just surprised that they don't either.

hewantstolurkatad

Quote from: Replies From View on October 08, 2017, 10:36:12 PM
But it's the third party wankers who make the money from overpriced resales, though.  That's what I don't understand about Nintendo's brilliant tactic.  I don't personally give a shit about Nintendo's profits.  I'm just surprised that they don't either.
Nintendo have to roughly project  what sales will be ages out though. By the time the NES mini was announced there was probably already a pretty firm limit on how many they could produce, it's entirely possible they were objective about 20 or so of the games being garbage they couldn't sell elsewhere and assumed audiences may think the same. Plus the relative lack of success of similar machines wasn't exactly a beacon of potential in the market.


Nintendo's issue is that they're consistently extremely bearish, as far as I can recall they've never taken a risk with this kind of thing in their history. It's really quite unusual for a modern corporation and I struggle to see if they've benefitted much from it at all, would one overly optimistic season for the Gamecube have hurt them much? Maybe it would've done, and they still managed to wrack up monstrous sales of most their in-demand machines. Could the Wii have really done much more sales wise than it did?
There were big risks with overproducing the NES mini that extended beyond the long term value of that product in itself, creeping into the perceived value of those cash cow games on the machine; I don't think they have that excuse this time around, these are far better games that'll hold up regardless and the format is a proven success.

They're getting a hell of a lot of free publicity about the stock issues for this one in spite of it seeming to be a lot more readily available than the NES was, so while they'll almost certainly underproduce, I'm sure part of it is just hype this time around too.
Plus, like TBC said up above, if its a case of reserving parts for the Switch or the mini, it's a total non brainer on Nintendo's end of which to prioritise.

greenman

The Neo Geo one would have been the most attractive for me if most reviews didn't have it down as a bit of a pigs ear done on the cheap by some other company rather than SNK.

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Replies From View on October 08, 2017, 10:33:26 PM
Hmm.  As yet no sign of new stock anywhere in the last several months since the SNES mini went on pre-order and sold out...

Nope. Additional stock has become available since the first pre-orders went live. For example, Tesco were taking orders from them last month; John Lewis, a week or two ago.

Quote from: Replies From View on October 08, 2017, 10:36:12 PM
But it's the third party wankers who make the money from overpriced resales, though.  That's what I don't understand about Nintendo's brilliant tactic.  I don't personally give a shit about Nintendo's profits.  I'm just surprised that they don't either.

It does – this is why there has been more stock available at launch this time, Nintendo saying there will be more stock becoming available (and in the meantime, don't pay scalper priced) and also announcing that the NES version will be re-released next time.

There is some good info about this on Neogaf, but it boils down to trying to balance between producing too much stock (which will either have to be written off or sold off cheaply) and producing too much. Nintendo can lean to the latter when it underestimates demand.

When Tim Cook was making his name at Apple, when he was COO, he completely overhauled the supply chain. A major result is that Apple stopped having a few month's inventory of stock and a few days' worth instead – Cook contends (with good reason) that having a lot of stock piled up wastes money due to depreciation; due to flexibility of supply they can increase or decrease production with very short notice. As hewantstolurkatad, quite rightly says, there was a lot of risk for Nintendo producing the NES one - and coupled to that, it doesn't have the kind of executive that was able to do what Cook did because of the way the company operates.

Corporate culture needs to be considered. Nintendo is a Kyoto-based company and such companies are very old-fashioned and hierarchical even for Japanese standards. The head of a company can't just go ahead and make decisions; instead they have to get agreement from their top brass, which is usually a very time-consuming process. Additionally, because there has to be this level of agreement/cooperation, far more people have veto over decisions than many would suppose.

Dan Adelman, who was the Indie champion at Nintendo, had some very interesting things about how this affected Nintendo's decisions, after he left. IIRC, he pointed out that a fair of top brass are from the NES-sort of period, who don't really 'get' a lot of modern aspects of gaming and this has had an impact on ideas being kyboshed. It's very possible that something happened here – top execs didn't get why people would want this, so production was limited.

Konki

I'm not a gamer so I've only just found out about this. I think the SNES was the last time I had a console and I want one of these. How likely is it I can get hold of one and any tips on making my chances better? I can't stress enough how clueless I am about all this.

Gurke and Hare

Quote from: Konki on October 22, 2017, 03:27:25 PM
I'm not a gamer so I've only just found out about this. I think the SNES was the last time I had a console and I want one of these. How likely is it I can get hold of one and any tips on making my chances better? I can't stress enough how clueless I am about all this.

Keep an eye on this. It looks like Game briefly had some in stock this week, not for long but it's probably your best chance before there's more wider stock availability.

Konki

That's great, cheers!

You say about wider stock availability... do you reckon it's going to be freely available at some point then?

NoSleep

I saw them for sale in CEX, Crawley (£140) last week.

Gurke and Hare

Quote from: Konki on October 22, 2017, 05:19:57 PM
You say about wider stock availability... do you reckon it's going to be freely available at some point then?

Someone else who pays a bit more attention than me will probably be able to confirm/deny this, but I think Nintendo have said that there will be plenty of stock in due course, and don't pay over the odds for it if you can be a bit patient.

Konki

Quote from: Gurke and Hare on October 22, 2017, 08:17:27 PM
Someone else who pays a bit more attention than me will probably be able to confirm/deny this, but I think Nintendo have said that there will be plenty of stock in due course, and don't pay over the odds for it if you can be a bit patient.

If that's the case then I'm happy to be patient. I will register for stock updates on the off chance though. Thanks again.

Quote from: NoSleep on October 22, 2017, 06:54:04 PM
I saw them for sale in CEX, Crawley (£140) last week.

Thanks, NoSleep. Unfortunately I've had previous with CEX so I doubt they'll ever see a penny out of me again, the shysters.