This morning’s launch of Nintendo’s latest retro mini-console, the Super NES Classic Edition, was a lot less frustrating for gamers than last year’s NES Classic Edition launch.
By most accounts, Nintendo shipped 10 to 20 times as many Super NES Classic Edition consoles to stores for today’s launch than it did for the NES Classic Edition launch last year, but even with far greater supply, the system was still completely sold out just a few hours into the morning.
I headed down to the downtown Seattle Target at 6:50 this morning to check out the line, expecting to see maybe ten or twenty people waiting to get inside while employees turned everyone else away. To my great surprise, there were ninety people in line, and the employee was still handing out tickets for the 120 units they had available to sell today.
As expected, Amazon also sold the Super NES Classic Edition today on the Treasure Truck. It also sold out there in just five to ten minutes.
Despite the near-instant sellouts across the nation, it does appear that Nintendo is making good on their June promise to “produce significantly more units of Super NES Classic Edition than we did of NES Classic Edition.” Last year most stores only got five or six NES Classic Edition consoles to sell on launch day, but this year gamers across the country are reporting that many stores had 50 or more Super NES Classic Edition consoles to sell today.
The Super NES Classic Edition costs $79.99 and comes with 21 games, including Star Fox 2, a previously unreleased title.
If you missed out today, don’t worry. Nintendo has said that they will produce the system through at least the end of this year, and if today’s supply is any indication, there should be plenty more chances to snag one.
Update: Despite the grey skies, wind gusts, and rain, there was a positively festive mood at the Treasure Truck pickup this afternoon in SoDo. In addition to the Treasure Truck itself, there was at least one additional truck full of Super NES Classic Edition inventory that Amazon brought down for the sales event. The Amazon employee manning the backup inventory truck declined to disclose how many consoles they were selling at the Treasure Truck in Seattle today, but he did say there were additional trucks with inventory nearby. The truck that we saw looked like it was probably stocked with around three thousand consoles when it was full, so it’s probably safe to say that the Seattle Treasure Truck sold at least five thousand of them today.
