Not that surprising (Gaming)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Saturday, April 15, 2017, 03:36 (2789 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Given the choice between manufacturing capacity for that or for the switch, you can see how they would use the capacity for the switch.

Is that really a choice they had to make? Given the rate at which NES Classics were being stocked, I think they had a single boy hand carving them. Can't see that benefiting Switch production much.

That is the point. They do not have the manufacturing capacity for tons of these. To get more would be a waste, since it could be used for the switch instead.

That sounds like nonsense to me. You buy as much manufacturing capacity as you want. Nothing in either the Switch nor the NES Classic is a part that constrains supply-- we're not talking about sapphire glass screens here, or custom graphics chips from the 8 and 16 bit eras, when Atari and Commodore dueled each other by literally purchasing chip fabbing capacity they did not need in order to deny it to the other.

If there's something Nintendo considers limited with regard to the Switch and the NES, it's mindshare. They didn't want the NES Classic overshadowing the Switch or competing with it for shelf space or customer attention. They were probably alarmed at how quickly and easily people were able to hack it to add arbitrary ROMs

http://www.polygon.com/2017/1/11/14237518/nes-classic-edition-hack-roms-nintendo

as well as how quickly it seemed to become apparent that they had themselves taken advantage of work done by the emulation community, despite them being very critical of that community

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-01-18-did-nintendo-download-a-mario-rom-and-sell-it-back-to-us

There was also a good observation by a commenter over on the Jimquisition's editorial about the NES suggesting that it is just SOP for Japanese companies that promote items as limited and exclusive to actually stick to that definition, to manufacture a predetermined and specified number of an item, and then stop. This preserves the exclusive and limited nature of the product. It is worth remembering that Nintendo is a toy company, not a game company.