The Super NES Classic Edition was revealed on June 26, 2017, as the successor to the widely-popular NES Classic. Nintendo announced that the system would come with 21 Super Nintendo games, including the unreleased
Star Fox 2. It was released in North America on September 29, 2017, with a price of $79.99.
Criticism of availability With the release of the Super NES Classic Edition, Nintendo was strongly criticized for the system's lack of availability for the console, which reached levels of popularity that they had not been fully prepared for. On July 21, 2017, the console was mistakenly made available for
pre-order at
Walmart in the
United States due to a "technical glitch", and all pre-orders were cancelled on July 26, leading to widespread criticism among the gaming press.
PC Magazine called the situation "badly handled by Walmart" and said that the future availability of the console was "not looking good".
USGamer called attempting to obtain a Super NES Classic Edition a "waking nightmare" and stated the availability would likely be as low as the NES Classic, saying the situation was "because we can't have nice things". Nintendo gave no comment about the situation. On August 22, 2017, pre-orders officially opened at several major retailers, causing many of their sites to crash before customers could buy the system, as well as at physical
GameStop locations in limited amounts, which also sold out quickly on a
first-come, first-served basis. The
Target website became "glitched out", removing the items from users' carts, This led to Nintendo of America being criticized as "inept or underhanded", and that they contributed to a "chaotic" situation. Scalpers soon flooded
eBay with pre-order listings, some at markups of over 300%. He also stated that the company was not trying to create
artificial scarcity, saying that the issues with pre-orders were "outside our control". With the Super NES Classic Edition, Nintendo originally said that although they were prepared to produce significantly more Super NES Classics than NES Classics, they would be halting production at the end of 2017. Due to overwhelming demand, Nintendo changed their plans, with Reggie Fils-Aimé confirming the continued production of the system throughout 2018 alongside announcing the return of the NES Classic in 2018, which many people were unable to get after scalpers bought masses of them and resold them for much more than their MSRP. Fils-Aimé also discouraged consumers from buying from these scalpers and said there would be plenty stock of both NES and SNES. In May 2018, Nintendo of America announced via
Twitter that both consoles would be in stock throughout the second half of 2018, with the NES Classic returning to stores on June 29. On December 13, 2018, Reggie Fils-Aimé affirmed that both the NES and SNES Classic Editions will not be restocked after the 2018 holiday season, nor does Nintendo anticipate producing any similar mini-console version of its other home consoles in the future. == Reception ==