Nintendo is a company that makes rather odd decisions, and sometimes it works out for them, and sometimes it doesn’t. An example of this would be the company’s decision to discontinue the NES Classic Edition which is basically a modern revival of the console in a $60 package. It came preloaded with classic games and has proven to be a huge hit.In fact recently during an interview with TIME, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime revealed that they had managed to sell 2.3 million units of the console to date, which is an increase from the 1.5 million units we heard about back in February. Given that figure it sounds like if anything Nintendo should continue with it, right? However according to Fils-Aime, he reiterated that the console was only meant to be a temporary thing.
The Nintendo exec was quoted as saying, “We had originally planned for this to be a product for last holiday. We just didn’t anticipate how incredible the response would be. Once we saw that response, we added shipments and extended the product for as long as we could to meet more of that consumer demand.”
He also offered up a reason why the company decided to discontinue it, saying that there were other areas that they wanted to focus on. “But from our perspective, it’s important to recognize where our future is and the key areas that we need to drive. We’ve got a lot going on right now and we don’t have unlimited resources.” That being said, we have heard the rumors of a possible SNES Mini in the works that could replace the NES Classic Edition, so here’s hoping that’s true.
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