Nintendo is mediocre (at best) when it comes to meeting demand with hardware and accessories, based on recent history, but it can still enjoy some impressive sales in the busiest shopping periods. Some 'Black Friday' reports and analysis reinforce both points.
Starting off with the US market, Adobe released some highlight figures for sales on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. It reports increased revenues over those two key days, and Nintendo pops up in the positives and negatives - Pokémon Sun and Moon were the best-selling games, but Nintendo hardware was most likely to go out of stock.
Out-of-stock items: The products most likely to run out-of-stock include Nintendo NES Classic, PlayStation VR bundle, PlayStation 4 Call of Duty Black Ops bundle, Beats Solo, Nintendo 3DS XL Solgaleo Lunala Black Edition and Xbox One S Madden NFL 17 Console Bundle for electronics in addition to Hatchimals, Razor Hovertrack 2.0, Kurio Smartwatches, Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar, Lego Star Wars, Paw Patrol Jungle Tracker's Cruiser Vehicle and Little Tikes Princess Horse & Carriage for toys. Out-of-stock messages were at 10.5 percent, 1.5 percent less than levels seen in 2015 and 1.9 percent higher than on Thanksgiving Day (8.6 percent). Products under $300 were 20 percent more likely to be out-of-stock.
Most popular products of the season: For the entire season so far (Nov. 1 – 24), PlayStation 4 is the best-selling video game console, followed by Microsoft Xbox One. Pokémon Sun and Moon leads in video games, followed by Call of Duty. Samsung 4K TVs lead in televisions, followed by Vizio 4K TVs.
HookLogic has looked at the UK market during the Black Friday weekend, stating sales were up. In a list of most-searched products in toys between 7th and 21st November - leading up to the sales - we can see Nintendo, Pokémon and NES Classic Edition getting plenty of attention.
Of course, for all of the positives there has been significant frustration at low stock levels, especially in the US. The rather handsome $99 New Nintendo 3DS models, for example, flew off shelves (virtual and real) and a number ended up on eBay.
How did you get on in the Black Friday sales; did you get any Nintendo goodies that you were after?
[source businesswire.com, via businesswire.com]
Comments (42)
I waited 10 hours outside k.b toys hoping to get my hands on a mario paint. Turns out they were out of stock. The store was also suspiciously abandoned.
Maybe its Nintendo selling all those NES Minis on ebay
This is the first black Friday I can remember where I didn't purchase anything Nintendo. Sony received all of my money this year. Sadly I don't plan on buying any Nintendo items this season.
The shortage of NES minis is among the stupidest decisions Nintendo has made this year. Other than Pokemon, they have absolutely nothing to sell.
When they announced the mini, I said to myself, "Nice. At least they have something to sell this Xmas."
Then Nintendo does what they do best and doesn't have nearly enough to go around. The bottom line is, at a time when they desperately need some cash they purposely withhold the only thing that would sell well during the Holidays.
Didn't bother this year. Already own pretty much everything.
But honestly, the lack of NES mini stock is absolutely baffling. Like...it's beyond words how badly they dropped the ball on this. Let's just hope it's because all of their efforts are being dumped into completely nailing the Switch launch. If that's the case, I'm ok with this.
I still haven't actually seen a Mini NES in a store yet.
Nintendo are the kings of terrible artificial scarcity. The NES Mini sold out! That's because they shipped very few, with many stores receiving literally single digit stock. Thus, when they supply more, suddenly everyone has to have it because it's like, in really high demand and really rare you guys while nintendo pretends that they didn't think an obviously big seller product featuring some of the most famous IP in the world wouldn't be a big seller.
See also: amiibo
Tsk...PS4 just completely Nothing for me. The worst ever. Xbox One just extremely even worse than PS4. My eyes will just Only stared at Nintendo stuffs. Nothing gonna stop my Love with Nintendo. Nothing gonna distract me but Nintendo stuffs. Sorry, still my opinion even sound harsh.
Blah! Maybe after Christmas I can find one when the hype tones down,hopefully....
If Nintendo does not find a way to get significant stock of the NES mini into stores before Christmas then they will have missed the opportunity. Demand will drop off significantly once the gift giving season is over.
Somehow this is Reggie's fault I know it! Get your s#[email protected] together Reggie!
Completely baffling to me that in this holiday season, in which they have very little to sell, that they completely under produced the NES Classic. That thing would sell like crazy and get them some much needed revenue for the year.
I waited in line at Best Buy for a black standard new 3DS and they were sold out before I could even get in the door.
I fully expect Nintendo to have less than 10 Switches per store.
NES Mini likely to be out of stock? Ha they were never in stock to begin with.
Why can't at least ninty make more of the black new 3ds normal size? Doesn't matter if they bring it back with a higher price, but at least make it an option, since it's currently the only way to get a black new 3ds.
Nice planning, Ninty
Over 2 weeks later and I'm still waiting on my NES Classic Mini preorder from July 14th, I ordered it the very moment it was available to do so. And there is absolutely no sign of it arriving any time soon. I ordered controller extension cables last week that arrived today. Nintendo you need a rght good boot up the backside!
@Anti-Matter that's because you have a obsession with Nintendo. Nintendo can do no wrong in your eyes.
@JHDK When I read KB Toy Store, I was shocked! I thought, THEIR STILL AROUND! Then I continued and saw Mario Paint, and I thought, ahh, makes sense now! Lol!
I bought Dragon Ball Fusions 3 days before black Friday, and having a blast with it! As for actual Black Friday, my money went to PS4 games and movies.
@BinaryFragger
Couldn't agree more with your further analysis. Nintendo sent me an email blast regarding the NES classic, and I straight up laughed at it. They act like you can just go out and buy one. I've never seen one, so it is about as real to me as the Holy Grail.
They should have done pre-orders to measure the demand, but since they didn't, the least they could have done was overproduce these. Agreed, that they knew these would sell. At 60 bucks, they're basically an impulse buy; however you can't impulse buy something if it fails to exist in the first place.
The stock for the Black Friday New 3DS was pretty bad so I just went with the Mario one instead. Haven't bought a copy of 3D Land yet and it has better faceplates imo. Aside from that, I got Pokemon Moon along with a Lucina and Ness amiibo.
Stop ruining lives Reggie!
With the NES Mini I am kinda getting sick of people constantly throwing out the whole artificial scarcity idea. This is likely just a classic case of people buying up the product faster than Nintendo can make them. It's common with a lot of hot items.
It's easy to think think Nintendo is deliberately short selling from an outside perspective but in the business world accurately estimating supply and demand is much more difficult than it looks. It's also on the retailers to decide how much they want to order as well as how much shelf space they are willing to allocate to said product. The truth is no amount of pre orders would really cause them to alter their production quota which is likely why they didn't allow pre orders in the first place.
@BinaryFragger
This is just one of those situations where Nintendo can't win. If they over produce they risk getting stuck with unsold stock which is worse in the long run but even if they were able to produce enough units there is a good chance scalpers would overpurchase still leaving many people with nothing. Remember that one guy who bought up all the Rosalina amiibos simply so nobody else could have one. With the Majoras Mask 3DS they tried to combat scalpers with limits per customer but that didn't really work since the scalpers just used alt names to get around it.
I am not really defending Nintendo here but you can't fault them for wanting to be cautious considering they haven't exactly been at the top of the heap this gen. That's also likely why they said they lowballed their initial planned shipment of Switch to avoid getting burned too badly in the event the system flops
@BensonUii People also seem to forget that Wii was coming off the Gamecube which at the time was Nintendo's worst selling system in history. Many people mocked the system and said it would never catch on boy were they wrong
If we're all honest I think Sony took it all this Black Friday and cyber monday
I'm confident there's a placard at Nintendo that reads: better too little than too much
Nintendo will never change.
But, of course, "Please, understand".
Pokémon Sun and Moon beating out Call of Duty, nice!
The demand for the NES Mini is ludicrously high. I personally thought it would have been like those Sega Megadrive classics that nobody buys.
Why do you people want it so much?
The only good deals are (surprisingly) on the eshop, but I did convince my friend to purchase Pokémon Omega Ruby 😃
@Dr_Lugae It's Nintendo fever, driven by good old fashioned nostalgia and of course Pokémon Go/Sun/Moon. Scalpers disgust me though; regardless of the fact that I didn't want one, it must me mega annoying for genuine fans who wanted to add this to their collection. Without the former being the leeches that they are, there would likely be enough to go around.
I'm ordering Switch the same day that I'm able to, for collection in-store to boot. They aren't screwing with me on that one. Perhaps I'll order a NES Mini when they become available again, just to spite the fools.
I can see how the NES Mini wasn't expected to sell as well as it did ($60 for a bunch of 25-30 year old games, most of which the average consumer will probably never play). However, the New 3DS shortages make me angry because all the online shops started selling them a full day before they advertised they would, and with Sun/Moon Nintendo should have expected high sales and either stocked more or sold it for a higher price.
Nintendo really dropped the ball this sales season. They have a 240k units of a dead console need to shift, and the only handheld where you can play proper Pokémon, and they let the big boys deliver all the bargains. Madness.
@8itmap_k1d They can't win either way, as scalpers will do way more damage than they ever will. If I want to play Sun and Moon for example, I can go out and get a 2DS for less than £100 that may not be the hallowed 'limited edition', but it will be in my hands in a matter of minutes. They didn't do this intentionally like some are suggesting, it's a combination of circumstances and greedy muthafools.
@MoonKnight7 Yeah, I sent a reply to that email promo about the NES Mini suggesting they should make sure they make enough stock before they bother sending me info about a product I can't buy (unless I'm willing to pay WAY over the asking price!).
And if they don't sort out the stock levels in time for Christmas, they'll have really messed up! With no other big game other than Pokemon Sun/Moon they NEED to have this in stores!
@Wolfgabe
There's a difference between being cautious and sending out 3 items per retail store. That's incompetence.
I managed to get the Black New 3DS, plus Pokemon Y and Codename Steam.
Nothing has arrived yet, though.
@Anti-Matter no ones asking. Dont derail the topics please.
@Luna_110 I snagged a white NN3DS (and a 32g micro sd card), Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE (more than 60% off ) a PS4 controller & Mabel Amiibo. I currently only have the Ps4 controller.... as I sit here waiting.... I feel your pain.
@mordecai You also need to consider that Nintendo needs to make sure their shipment is evenly distributed among retailers. 10 units per store may not seem like much but if you are talking about every store in America than it adds up fast
@Wolfgabe I'm sorry but the idea of Nintendo not wanting to overproduce because there was the potential of ending up with a bunch of unsold units is hogwash.
A truckload of unsold units is one thing if it is a $300 gaming system (say the Wii U) that qualifies as a major purchase, but the NES Mini is set at a price affordable to damn near anyone. It is also the type of product that would have "legs" and continue to sell further down the line after the initial burst has died down.
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