NES Classic 2ᴺᴰ Edition--Now We Wait

In early March I still couldn’t get my dirty mitts on one of the elusive NES Classics. I prognosticated that Nintendo would kill off the current generation hardware, quickly and quietly, introducing a new version with DRM and perhaps an always-on Internet connection. Jerks.

Even a month after my post, Nintendo said NES Classic shipments were still going out. They acknowledged limited quantities were available. Then they just killed it. 

I was right on the death of the NES Classic. I didn't expect Nintendo to be giving supporting reports about product availability up until the month before they nixed it. Will they turn around and announce the new-and-improved NES Classic by the end of the fiscal year, a new NES Classic 2ᴺᴰ Edition? A wise man once told me be wary of anyone who speaks of the future with both "what" and "when" as one will be a lie. Here I reveal only the "what". 

If you make a product that is impossible to find in the traditional market and then discontinue that product, you must have an alternative in the wings or you’re leaving money on the table. Nintendo spoke recently about continuing to bring new titles to the Virtual Console for their 3DS handheld platform but noticeably said nothing about Virtual Console on the Switch. Do they hope to shift Virtual Console players focus to the handheld systems?

If I Had One I Wouldn't Be Writing About It

Nintendo loves to create pent-up demand for their products that explodes in a gluttinous frenzy of consumerism. They’re not alone in this. Apple does it too. More companies probably wish they could do it. The big difference is that Apple’s supply chain eventually meets demand. Some of y’all stood in line to get an Apple Watch. Good times? What is the logic behind a wildly popular product that gets pulled from the market far from having met market saturation?

Nintendo had some strange numbers in their 2017 Q1 report. They sold more copies of the new Zelda title than the Switch consoles to play it on. Funny math? It doesn’t have to be. Nintendo had more disks available on launch than consoles. People walked into the local Best Buy, tried to buy a Switch but settled to grab the game. Perhaps it might be difficult to find in the future too! Too bad they couldn’t also walk out with a NES Classic. The only reason for that is poor product development.  

“The NES Classic was discontinued when demand was still piping hot.”

I can forgive Apple for the shortages its products face on release. I’ve seen the Shenzhen factory-cities where they’re made and met a couple of the “ant-people” that worked in them. Production there is flat-out, all the time. That’s not the case with a stock Linux-box in a plastic case running ancient software. The NES Classic was discontinued when demand was still piping hot. As of this writing, the NES Classic can be had on Amazon for $250 or nearly four times its MSRP. Nintendo has products that could easily duplicate the Virtual Console but they cost far north of $60.

Was the NES Classic too cheap? In my previous post I mentioned what a glut of storage space was available on the classic compared to that used by the device. I noted that a homebrew kinda gal with a massive ROM collection could load just about every NES ROM they’d ever want to play on to the Classic. These guys talk about it too. But OEM limits at the factory configuring these devices might not have given Nintendo much of an option. The era of 128k memory modules is gone. Flash memory is talked about in hundreds of gigabytes today. You’re going to overshoot your target on this one.  

From a manufacturing angle, the Classic could have been even less expensive. But selling it for much more might have led to a consumer back-lash. The software technology is ancient and many of the buyers are retro-heads who had purchased many of the games previously. The company knows it's walking the fence with them. But the faith is strong. Nintendo has never been a company to take a loss on a console. They’ve been winning with the NES Classic from the first device sold. But they weren’t the ones making the fattest per-unit profits. Those went to the grey market. 

Nintendo could have raised the price. Nintendo could have justified adding wireless Internet connectivity to the box, added another controller, doubled the number of included games and put it back on the shelf for a cool $100. That’s even a classic price. 

They won’t even do that without fixing the DRM hole. This is the problem. Oddly enough with this device, it’s not about all the intellectual property included with it that’s at risk. It’s all the intellectual property that those rascally fans would want to stuff into it and let it do even more wonderful things. Mega Man 3 is not included? Fix that. Duck Tales was your jam? Bring it back. All that is possible on the current device. That’s too much for Nintendo to handle.

A Path to Wicked Profits

Nintendo is too smart to let this opportunity slip by. They made a mistake that the shareholders could not accept—a DRM hole. But there is a large amount of money on the table and NES Classic sales do not directly compete with Switch sales. Here are the modifications we will most likely see (I won't call them upgrades)--

• They will add that wireless connectivity module to it.
• They will upgrade the hardware to be *more difficult* to hack. Don’t kid yourself. It’s never impossible.
• They will create an online store, tailored for this device through which users can buy titles. Titles will probably be nailed down to the device, no transfers.
• They will lengthen the cables on the NES controller or just go wireless altogether. Not possible? Talk to the people at 8Bitdo. They’ve been doing it for years. 

“This would not be the NES Classic 2ᴺᴰ Edition that gamers want. But this is what Nintendo will give us. ”

The greatest thing about this for Nintendo is that it would create a model for a new device ideally off-set with the major console releases every couple years down the line. Introducing the SNES Classic! A 1/8ᵀᴴ scale model of the device that got the ‘90s started. I just can’t wait to get my hands on the GameCube Classic around 2032. It will be about the size of a golf ball. But square. And purple. 

The good news is that the entry to classic NES gaming for the masses is still low and hasn’t changed. In my previous post I mentioned some paths. While the grey market options may infuriate Nintendo’s shareholders, they can only blame the company for the mountains of cash they have not collected to date bringing these legacy titles back to market. 

I’m confident that we will never see an unprotected NES Classic edition released to the market. Nintendo will use the release of these legacy consoles as a goose to get eyeballs and drum up anticipation about the brand. They could also use the release of a legacy console as a quick fix in anticipation of a dull string of quarters. 

This would not be the NES Classic 2ᴺᴰ Edition that gamers want. But this is what Nintendo will give us. The NES Classic was a beautiful butterfly of a corporate mistake. As a piece of retro-gaming hardware, it will probably be worth every penny collectors put into it today. But my greatest childhood gaming memories didn’t happen staring at pristine shrink-wrapped boxes. 

Here’s hoping Nintendo nails it on their second attempt!

-As a child, Ryan Blocher was a world champion NES cartridge cleaner. He attributes his success to yogic breathing techniques divined at the feet of Guru Baba Toadi at the Pineapple Heaven ashram in the Himalayas.

Nintendo Classic Switched Off?

UPDATE 4.26.17: Nintendo has straight-up 86'ed the NES Classic. Reports of stock coming were false. No word yet on Virtual Console-capability for the Switch. A follow-up article to my minor prognostics is on the way.

It's March 2016. Half a year on and I’ve got $60 here that says I will never be able to buy a NES Classic at its MSRP. 

Christmas 2016 was my first with the in-laws. My brother-in-law and I share a lot of likes. A perhaps unreasonable love for Nintendo is one of them. When I saw that he had the Nintendo Classic on his wish list, we claimed it. This little device isn't just a re-issue of the original 1985 NES console. The NES Classic is a tiny replica of that original NES with 30 games pre-installed, no cartridges required. I put the NES Classic in an Amazon wishlist alongside an extra controller, a carrying case and the oughta-be-included extension cables for the two controllers. Then I waited.

Christmas came and went. It is now four months since the release of the retro-console and, this side of a back-alley scalper, it is still unavailable. Average prices were as high as current-gen consoles around Christmas and have since fallen to around $150 at several quasi-legit outfits around the web. 

I love my brother-in-law but I refuse to fall in for the artificial shortage trickle-release nonsense surrounding Nintendo’s product releases. When the Wii was released, I called a Best Buy 28 miles away down a long mountain road every Sunday morning for several months just to see if they had received any during the weekly restock. The current word from Nintendo is that they never anticipated the popularity of the NES Classic. Rumors swirl that brick and mortar shops are receiving irregular shipments. It's real! People have seen them in the wild. But no one knows when and no one knows where this illusive crypto-console might turn up. A website claiming to have information just shunts me to eBay scalpers. 

Nintendo says the device is far more popular than they expected but that doesn't explain why they haven’t been able to make a dent in the grey-market over the past fiscal quarter. If Apple misread the market for an iPhone and four months later had failed to meet market demand, their shareholders would revolt. Nintendo is leaving money on the table.

So what gives? 

The NES Classic is a replica NES housing a tiny Linux micro-computer set up to emulate NES hardware with 30 included games (ROMs). It is what it is. Plug it in to the wall. Plug it in to your TV (via HDMI!). It doesn’t require connectivity to the Internet. There’s no requirement to phone home for updates. Take it or leave it, right? The unit includes 512MB of memory. No cartridges to blow. A half-gig ROM stick may not sound like much but the original NES console cartridges only used between 8 kB and 1 MB of ROM memory. Wikipedia points out, “128 to 384 kB was most common”. Homemade ROMs suggest there’s some truth to this.

So work with me here. 

I am going to suggest that the reason the Nintendo Classic is MIA is that some higher-up at Nintendo might have realized that they had inadvertently released a near-perfect product, a reasonably priced stand-alone NES emulator with time-tested hardware add-ons and the ability for homebrew modification. No compatibility issues. No hardware or software that will ever need updates to better connect to your home wifi system. It is perfect. 

So what?

With $60 and a bit of work, a user has the ability to install and play not 30 NES games but the entire NES catalog. Or at least every decent ROM you could scrounge up. This flies in the face of everything Nintendo has done over the past three decades. Ever since the Wii, we’ve been able to buy legacy games for Nintendo’s consoles through the Virtual Console, Nintendo's walled-off online store. With the Wii U, our licenses didn't transfer and we had to buy the games through its own store. With the Switch we anticipate the same. Want to play the original NES Super Mario Bros. on the newest console? The Wii license you purchased in 2007 won’t transfer. Neither will the Wii U license. Who am I kidding? You probably didn’t buy a Wii U. But requiring its users to re-up their licenses for 1985 titles has become a regular feature of the Nintendo lifestyle. This lifestyle sucks. 

Nintendo has been unwilling to sell their legacy catalog on iOS or Android devices. Nintendo doesn't like the Apple Tax on all in-app purchases. They also are probably frustrated that the purchases transfer from device to device. A license for NES Castlevania bought when you had an iPhone 3G would still work today on your new iPhone 7+ unless Nintendo refused to update their emulator app. It would be inconsequential for Nintendo to release an emulator for our phones. Third-party NES emulators exist for jailbroken iPhones. Once in a while an emulator will even sneak through Apple’s iTunes disguised as something else. But these products do not carry that all-so-precious Nintendo Seal of Approval. 

Far more intriguing to most retro-fanatics has been the progress of companies like Analogue with their NT, NT mini and 24k Gold NT—all sold out at the time of this writing. Analogue did not take the emulation route. They have repurposed original boards and added modern components for HDTV connectivity and Bluetooth controllers. If you have the original game cartridge—or a cart carrying a totally legally acquired (TLA) ROM on SDHC—you can play any game developed for any Nintendo system within the NES generation.

For still others, the openEmu software makes it possible to play a NES ROM (TLA) on your home computer. 

Here is some wild speculation: The NES Classic availability problem could just be due to shipping logistics. But I doubt it. After the release of the Switch we will go a couple more months with no movement on the NES Classic. Then, with much fanfare, an update to the NES Classic will be announced. This update will promise more games, better games and the chance to buy even more games at a later date through a custom-made Internet portal. It will be virtually identical to the existing unit but will have network capabilities, an always-connected requirement to play and extreme lock-down against homebrew modifications. 

Nintendo forgot the DRM. There is no logical reason for a lack of components on such a standard Linux product. The ROMs under emulation are nearly 40 years old. Nintendo has been developing emulation software for decades. Tiny Linux boxes are not in short supply anywhere in the world. Nintendo probably repurposed a NES-shaped pencil-sharpener for the NES Classic case. Yes, it’s really that small.

If the NES Classic has really been ghosted from the market, is the unit worth $250 four months on? If you've got the money, go for it. Otherwise, my recommendation would be to work backwards from a computer emulator like openEmu and find out what kind of player you are. "TLA" ROMs still a problem for you? Could you be satisfied with the 30 included games on the NES Classic? Do you have a bunch of old cartridges you’d like to slap into a new bullet-proof console?   

-Ryan Blocher loved his original NES and still regrets selling it to a nice Australian family in Cairo in 1992.