Nintendo President Talks About NES Classic Shortage, Says It Won’t Happen To Switch

NES Classic Mini success is considered a surprise even to Nintendo. With the NES Classic not available almost anywhere, there are speculations that Nintendo Is holding its supplies of the NES Classic. However, it might not be the case.  In his recent interview on GameSpot, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime discussed about the NES Shortage and bringing along Switch supply in the conversation.

GameSpot asked the game giant executive about the NES Classic shortage. The answer is it is just demand being in higher quantity than the available supply. But how could a company that is considered a giant in gaming industry make a mistake with its supply forecasting?

"When we looked at that proposition what we believed was the adults, 30-40 years old, who grew up playing NES as a kid, 10 years old or so but had stepped away from the gaming category--that was going to be the buyer [of the NES Classic]," Fils-Aime said.

"As we thought about that, that led us to a certain level of supply."

What really happened is the target market of "lapsed" gamers did make up the NES Classic's sale. But the "more active gamer" category are unexpectedly also hyped about the NES Classic, the supply is really small compared to the demand. Simply put, demand miscalculation.

It is worthy to note that the NES Classic has been announced mid-July last year and received a "just enough" reception, according to TechSpot. With a mild reception and a relatively small target market, the supply is not surprising to be relatively small.

Fil-Aime said that more units of NES Classic is being produced to address the shortage. He also said that Nintendo will not have that kind of shortage again with its new Nintendo Switch. The President said that Nintendo Switch will have 2 million units for its launch in March. That's a big digit for, considering that the Switch will launch nowhere near a holiday month.

"We're working to make sure that the supply chain [for Switch] is robust and there is a steady flow of hardware," he said. "The one piece we can't anticipate is the demand side of the equation but certainly from a supply, we feel like we're going to be well-positioned."