As you may already be aware, EB Games is taking a second run of pre-orders for the Nintendo Classic Mini NES today at 12 midday.
But what you might have missed: JB Hi-Fi already did its second run, on the quiet.
Didn’t matter: they were gone within minutes regardless.
This is insane.
Just over an hour ago JB Hi-Fi started taking pre-orders for Nintendo’s latest runaway hit. Of course, they’re all gone. So if you’re desperate for one of these things before Christmas time to chuck all your eggs in the EB Games basket. Shit is about to get hectic.
JB’s pre-order page is gone. It’s like it never even existed. Into dust.
@FiCan Hi Fiona, unfortunately all the very limited amount of units sold out before the release announcement could be made.
— JB Hi-Fi (@JBHiFi) November 13, 2016
Requiescat in pace.
Thanks Press-Start
Comments
20 responses to “JB Hi-Fi’s Nintendo Classic Mini NES Pre-Orders Sold Out In Minutes”
Wow. So they’re saying that they were told about the new shipment, they set up a webpage for ordering them, they limited the number on the webpage to the amount they had, but somehow this all happened so fast that they couldn’t tell people about it *before* it happened? Yeah, that makes sense.
If they had such a small amount and anticipated it selling out so quickly, it makes little sense to make a big public announcement.
They wouldn’t end up selling more units if more people knew. All that would have happened is increase the possibility of the site crashing, and create a bunch of unhappy customers.
Edit: JB clearly handled this a lot better than EB – as their site started crashing almost instantly. I was able to add one to my cart, but cant pay in the checkout.
Who would have thought that advertising all over your website, twitter and facebook, that you have extremely limited units going on sale at 12pm monday would make the site crash. Not EB obviously…. and they’re copping a lot of backlash on social media right now
They were telling people in store and who called about it. My girlfriend called last week and was told Monday morning sometime online only, I went in store saturday (happened to be there) and asked and was told 9am Monday but they expect to sell out quick. So makes perfect sense they wouldn’t have a countdown or big advertising if they know the amount they have will sell out quick anyway. They would have known they had a big demand for it even without an official announcement from the amount of calls and walk ins asking about placing orders too.
Blame nintendo, I heard a story of an indy store ordering around 100 units and only being allocated 2. They do this with all their products.
Glad i got mine.. but damned if im ever going to get a second controller at this rate!
From memory, some games on the NES that were “2” player only used 1 controller?
I remember playing super mario, 2 player mode in that was essentially single player, but alternating between mario/luigi on deaths.
That’s true for some games. But double dragon 2, SMB3 (the mode which Luigi and Mario plays against each other), sport like games, etc require a second controller to be experienced fully. Imo you are buying this console to have some social fun in your living room, else you would play those game alone on some kind of emulator.
Interview these people who think just because you work at these places means you get preferential treatment over legitimate paying customers.
I’d love to hear about the inner workings there and how it’s obviously still Nintendo’s fault.
Or post another snarky review from the shelves 😀
One of the very few benefits of working retail I suppose
EBGames getting smashed at the moment. Page either isn’t rendering or reporting that it’s under “heavy load”.
“It canna take any more Cap’n! Nostalgia and eBay profits are killing our warp core!”
eb games website is doooooown for the count.
I’m never going to get one : (
They should produce more units for Christmas. 🙁
Remind me again why people are losing their shit over a console and games they bought 25-30 years ago, sold when the SNES came out, downloaded when they got a PC that could emulate it, rebought again from a scalper in the early 2000’s to relive those memories, bought again when the Wii was release, sold the scalped versions when they realised they were worth something, bought them again on the DS VC store, bought them again on the WiiU VC store and added to their hacked consoles when they could….?
Sorry, failing to see why people are rushing to get these….
I did none of these things. Guess that’s why I want it.
Simple.
1. It’s cheap. All those virtual consoles solutions, you gotta buy a Wii U or a 3DS, they’re expensive, even second-hand.
2. Some console players don’t have great PC emulation experiences, mostly because they are used to plug-and-play, and don’t want to / can’t customize the options on most emulators, so they run into issues like key binding or performance quirks, skipping sound issues, etc.
I’m sorry, I forgot that everyone’s experience is exactly the same as yours.
Easy…….PC emulator and Wii/U VC are trash versions of these games.
NES mini, is not.
That’s a more exaggerated reason of why I don’t want one.
But it’s easy to see why you’d want one. It’s new, but it’s retro. And it’s adorable. It’s a piece of usable 90s nostalgia that doesn’t suck.
Because the squeaky wheel gets the grease, I thought I’d ask this again:
Can the next Tell Us Dammit request stories from people who went around asking about the Mini NES in-store last week/this week, and couldn’t grab one?
That sort of experience is markedly different to raging about a website being down.
I have several anecdotes and I believe others could share their war stories as well.
What’s there to tell?
“Hey do you have any-”
“Classic NES? Nope, sold out.”
“Oh ok”
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Trust me.
Heard some stories about Big W and Target staff telling customers they had X stock a few days before hand, and then on the day having less, but the local EB and JB have been telling me for months now they were all pre-ordered out, i was looking for a 2nd one for my nephew, so i would be interested in what stories you had?