Poll of the Day > Is Nintendo making a fortune from Animal Crossing or what?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Game is sold out on Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart websites here in Canada unless it's a digital code.
If I wanna order it Ebgames.ca seems to be the only site that has it in stock at the moment.
A shortage of consoles is understandable, but games? Whoa

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it was the perfect time with Covid and all.

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darcandkharg31 posted...

it was the perfect time with Covid and all.

Do you think this will be the highest selling game of 2020?
I wouldn't be surprised at all.

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I would be surprised, since it's a single-platform game for a system that isn't even this generation's top-selling system.

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Doesnt nintendo have a history of intentional creating scarcity of their products? Im sure the game is selling very well but its got some steep competition this year

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Mead posted...

Doesnt nintendo have a history of intentional creating scarcity of their products? Im sure the game is selling very well but its got some steep competition this year

This is BS. Why would they purposefully limit their product if there's demand? Like they don't want the money? People just underestimate the demand for Nin's games. It's also a good sign for physical media.

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How can it be sold out? You just buy the license and download/install it...

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Just made my order from Ebgames so at least I'll get my copy.

Clench281 posted...

How can it be sold out? You just buy the license and download/install it...

Physical copies.

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Ferarri619 posted...

Just made my order from Ebgames so at least I'll get my copy.

Physical copies.

that's just acquiring the game with extra steps

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Whenever Nintendo decides to start selling shit in animal crossing for real money, theyre going to make so much fucking money

and gaming will officially be dead

Clench281 posted...

that's just acquiring the game with extra steps

What if I have more than one switch and I want to play it on both systems

Clench281 posted...

that's just acquiring the game with extra steps

Walking to the mailbox is extra steps? Lazy.

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Clench281 posted...

that's just acquiring the game with extra steps

I prefer not to use up too much space on my SD cards and Switch space.

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DPsx7 posted...

This is BS. Why would they purposefully limit their product if there's demand? Like they don't want the money? People just underestimate the demand for Nin's games. It's also a good sign for physical media.

Misinformation Mead just likes retweeting fake news, tbh.

MICHALECOLE posted...

Whenever Nintendo decides to start selling shit in animal crossing for real money, theyre going to make so much fucking money

and gaming will officially be dead

https://tv.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/54c94789-87a3-4423-b7d5-1bcf99ed7226

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DPsx7 posted...

This is BS. Why would they purposefully limit their product if there's demand?

Nintendo doesn't want their games on sale ever. They create scarcity so demand always exceeds supply and they sell full price for the next 5 years.
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DPsx7 posted...

This is BS. Why would they purposefully limit their product if there's demand? Like they don't want the money? People just underestimate the demand for Nin's games. It's also a good sign for physical media.

Because it isn't bullshit. They did the same thing with the Wii.
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

Nintendo doesn't want their games on sale ever. They create scarcity so demand always exceeds supply and they sell full price for the next 5 years.

I'll agree it's harder to find their content on sale. Not sure why they're so firm on getting full retail as I always kind of assumed once a store buys product it's on them to determine sales. Nin got their cut by then.

I've heard the whole scarcity thing but don't believe that. The other thing is their products don't appear used as often. They can't exactly control that.

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DPsx7 posted...

I'll agree it's harder to find their content on sale. Not sure why they're so firm on getting full retail as I always kind of assumed once a store buys product it's on them to determine sales. Nin got their cut by then.

I've heard the whole scarcity thing but don't believe that. The other thing is their products don't appear used as often. They can't exactly control that.

That's because you believe in a lot of batshit insane things.
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I still dont get this game. So its like Sim City, but with cutesy animals? And you decorate stuff? It just doesnt seem like something Id be interested in.

BeerOnTap posted...

I still dont get this game. So its like Sim City, but with cutesy animals? And you decorate stuff? It just doesnt seem like something Id be interested in.

Its more akin to the sims, but even that is not quite correct. Lots of cutesy animals and while decorating is part of it, if you dont wanna do that you dont have to. If you like games where you see an evolution in your world, or a game where you collect things, or a game where things are slightly different every day, then youll like it.

if those things dont sound fun to you, you prolly wont

I think I read something saying it sold 3x that Doom sold

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MICHALECOLE posted...

Its more akin to the sims, but even that is not quite correct. Lots of cutesy animals and while decorating is part of it, if you dont wanna do that you dont have to. If you like games where you see an evolution in your world, or a game where you collect things, or a game where things are slightly different every day, then youll like it.

if those things dont sound fun to you, you prolly wont

I just watched about 15 minutes of someone playing it on Twitch. Hard pass for me.

BeerOnTap posted...

I still dont get this game. So its like Sim City, but with cutesy animals? And you decorate stuff? It just doesnt seem like something Id be interested in.

It's a slow-paced island-development game where you design the island to match your ideas. You can do whatever you want in it, to some degree. The setting mirrors your own, so that the time passes in the game, no-matter when you play. If it's 6AM your time, it'll be 6AM in the game.

Revelation34 posted...

That's because you believe in a lot of batshit insane things.

Feel free to prove they do. However if it's like any other time you're trying to catch me being wrong, you aren't going to have anything to say.

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BeerOnTap posted...

I just watched about 15 minutes of someone playing it on Twitch. Hard pass for me.

Well at least you gave it that much of a chance

MICHALECOLE posted...

Whenever Nintendo decides to start selling shit in animal crossing for real money, theyre going to make so much fucking money

and gaming will officially be dead

There is the animal crossing pocket (?) for mobile with all the usual gacha nonsense, i hope it stays there and not slip into consoles...

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Wanded posted...

There is the animal crossing pocket (?) for mobile with all the usual gacha nonsense, i hope it stays there and not slip into consoles...

I'd be cautiously optimistic about it staying with phones.
The mobile Animal Crossing is free to play. It's not a full price retail game.
If you look at the Battlefront 2 controversy from awhile back, one of the big arguments is that it was targeting children. I don't think Nintendo would want something like that on their belt. But again, cautiously optimistic. You just never know.

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Late breaking news!!

It was discovered earlier today that Nintendo *tm* released the virus in anticipation of Animal Crossing, to hike up sales significaatly. The virus has since been renamed the Tom Nook virus. Nintedo has refused to comment on the situation. We will update you as more information is available.

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Ferarri619 posted...

I'd be cautiously optimistic about it staying with phones.
The mobile Animal Crossing is free to play. It's not a full price retail game.
If you look at the Battlefront 2 controversy from awhile back, one of the big arguments is that it was targeting children. I don't think Nintendo would want something like that on their belt. But again, cautiously optimistic. You just never know.

Something rated teen is targeted towards children?
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

Nintendo doesn't want their games on sale ever. They create scarcity so demand always exceeds supply and they sell full price for the next 5 years.

Which is a bullshit claim, considering that recent consoles all have discounted "Players Choice" editions or whatever.

But keep spreading Mead's #FakeNews

Revelation34 posted...

Because it isn't bullshit. They did the same thing with the Wii.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Selects

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DPsx7 posted...

I've heard the whole scarcity thing but don't believe that.

Do you truly, honestly believe that Nintendo lacked the manufacturing capacity to make enough Amiibos - very simplistic plastic figurines - to satisfy demand better than they did? That that explanation is more likely than creating hype with artificial shortages to help guarantee the sale of everything they did produce?

In all likelihood, not every shortage of a Nintendo product is intentional. The Wii in particular I do believe was an example of them genuinely underestimating demand for it and not having the manufacturing capacity to keep up, as much as people like to think it was deliberate. But the notion that all of their shortages are purely due to how unexpectedly popular their products are every time is naive nonsense. In many cases, they do have the capacity to produce more than they do, and they choose not to in order to drive up demand and avoid overproducing their products.

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Zeus posted...

Which is a bullshit claim, considering that recent consoles all have discounted "Players Choice" editions or whatever.

But keep spreading Mead's #FakeNews

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Selects

I didn't know they put Nintendo Selects labels on actual consoles during first releases.
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adjl posted...

Do you truly, honestly believe that Nintendo lacked the manufacturing capacity to make enough Amiibos - very simplistic plastic figurines - to satisfy demand better than they did? That that explanation is more likely than creating hype with artificial shortages to help guarantee the sale of everything they did produce?

In all likelihood, not every shortage of a Nintendo product is intentional. The Wii in particular I do believe was an example of them genuinely underestimating demand for it and not having the manufacturing capacity to keep up, as much as people like to think it was deliberate. But the notion that all of their shortages are purely due to how unexpectedly popular their products are every time is naive nonsense. In many cases, they do have the capacity to produce more than they do, and they choose not to in order to drive up demand and avoid overproducing their products.

Amibos was something I was thinking about.

Like yeah, there are cases where it's real scarcity. But for real, they could have produced/sent out more of their hot sellers (Amibo wise) if they felt inclined to do so.

Now, considering how neutered the experience apparently is for anyone after the first player and the amount I've seen people talking about themselves and/or someone they know getting another Switch because of it... Well I imagine they might be making a tidy sum off the upswing in Switch sales...

It's also sold out in Amazon Mexico.

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> Is Nintendo making a fortune from Animal Crossing or what?

Weridly Ima say no... I mean, it's good, but Nintendo is kinda, like, really weird with handling money

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Lokarin posted...

> Is Nintendo making a fortune from Animal Crossing or what?

Weridly Ima say no... I mean, it's good, but Nintendo is kinda, like, really weird with handling money

How they handle the money afterwards doesn't matter. But they probably aren't making a fortune on it. Being sold out everywhere, with all the switches sold out as well has probably netted them quite a pretty penny...
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adjl posted...

Do you truly, honestly believe that Nintendo lacked the manufacturing capacity to make enough Amiibos - very simplistic plastic figurines - to satisfy demand better than they did? That that explanation is more likely than creating hype with artificial shortages to help guarantee the sale of everything they did produce?

Do you have any evidence to support your unfounded claim that it's an intentional attempt to create hype through scarcity? Because the more likely explanation is that you're talking out of your ass.

adjl posted...

In all likelihood, not every shortage of a Nintendo product is intentional. The Wii in particular I do believe was an example of them genuinely underestimating demand for it and not having the manufacturing capacity to keep up, as much as people like to think it was deliberate. But the notion that all of their shortages are purely due to how unexpectedly popular their products are every time is naive nonsense. In many cases, they do have the capacity to produce more than they do, and they choose not to in order to drive up demand and avoid overproducing their products.

Or, in much greater likelihood, it reflects the fact that Nintendo does many production runs instead of a few large ones.

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Zues anybody who tried to buy any of the early amibos know they shortprinted those shits to create scarcity, the only one talking out their ass is you, unless you have a good reason for why they made so few of them

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TheSlinja posted...

Zues anybody who tried to buy any of the early amibos know they shortprinted those shits to create scarcity, the only one talking out their ass is you, unless you have a good reason for why they made so few of them

Knows? You mean ASSUMES, and you know what they say about ASSuming! That and not everybody felt that way anyway, so you're doubly talking out of your ass.

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Mead posted...

Doesnt nintendo have a history of intentional creating scarcity of their products? Im sure the game is selling very well but its got some steep competition this year

No. There's a history of people making this idiotic claim, though, despite it going against even a child's understanding of economics. You don't artificially create a shortage of something you ALREADY think will sell really well- you'd make MORE of it. The *only* way it'd make sense to make an artificial shortage is if you price gouge, especially on future production waves. But that doesn't happen. Not to mention, video games are very heavily reliant on pre-sales/Day 1 sales. Sales tend to have large falloffs right after, which is why you see AAA games go on 30-50% sales just months after release. So the idea would be to flood the availability out of the gate, and then taper back from there (which is what actually happens).

The idea of forced scarcity makes even LESS sense than the already no sense that it does when you consider all games are digital now. The time and effort spent looking around town for a physical copy could be achieved with a $20 micro SD card purchase, if you don't have the space.

No other Switch games have been hard to find. It just so happens it dropped right as large-scale stay-at-home orders were going into place, and it's a fantastic time sink for those stuck at home. COVID is spurring the sales of an already popular game.


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TheSlinja posted...

Zues anybody who tried to buy any of the early amibos know they shortprinted those shits to create scarcity, the only one talking out their ass is you, unless you have a good reason for why they made so few of them

Amiibos are probably the most cited "example" of this, but this, too, is very easily explained away:

1. The shortage really on applied to SSB amiibos. Other games didn't really have this problem.
2. Making something like amiibos was a new thing for Nintendo.
3. SSB4 needed to have 50+ different amiibos for it, which is a hefty challenge.

Nintendo really couldn't have guessed just HOW popular amiibos would be, seeing as they had no data to support how well a toy-like device would sell for them. But the big challenge is the shear number of different types of amiibos Smash required - one for every fighter. That's a shit tone of molds to make. Further more, it's not like Nintendo knows how popular each one would be. They could bet that Mario, Pikachu, Link, etc. ones would sell, but how do you determine how many Wolf, or Mr. Game & Watch ones would sell? You would never make the same amount of Wolf ones as Mario, and it's no mistake that the first wave was of Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, etc. - popular figures that could be used to gage customer interest. Hell, we know this to be true, because some, like the Shulk amiibo, were Gamestop exclusives, and never made again. Which makes sense, but he's not exactly a headline character compared to the rest of the bunch.

Since seeing how popular amiibos were since SSb4, Nintendo really hasn't had a problem meeting demand since (and it certainly helps that they only had to make a handful of new ones for SSBU).

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CyborgSage00x0 posted...

No. There's a history of people making this idiotic claim, though, despite it going against even a child's understanding of economics. You don't artificially create a shortage of something you ALREADY think will sell really well- you'd make MORE of it. The *only* way it'd make sense to make an artificial shortage is if you price gouge, especially on future production waves. But that doesn't happen. Not to mention, video games are very heavily reliant on pre-sales/Day 1 sales. Sales tend to have large falloffs right after, which is why you see AAA games go on 30-50% sales just months after release. So the idea would be to flood the availability out of the gate, and then taper back from there (which is what actually happens).

The idea of forced scarcity makes even LESS sense than the already no sense that it does when you consider all games are digital now. The time and effort spent looking around town for a physical copy could be achieved with a $20 micro SD card purchase, if you don't have the space.

No other Switch games have been hard to find. It just so happens it dropped right as large-scale stay-at-home orders were going into place, and it's a fantastic time sink for those stuck at home. COVID is spurring the sales of an already popular game.

The Wii's initial release proves your post wrong.
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This is an interesting discussion.

Both sides make sense, but some sources to back up either side would be great.

I heavily lean toward intentional shortages because Nintendo games rarely drop in price unless put on their discount line. It also seems to happen to them the most, but that could be a coincidence.

Sadly Sega made a bunch of dreamcast consoles. Maybe a shortage would have saved them :p

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pedro45 posted...

Sadly Sega made a bunch of dreamcast consoles. Maybe a shortage would have saved them :p

Not having a whole production line be a fire risk might have as well.

I vote "what".

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Revelation34 posted...

The Wii's initial release proves your post wrong.

Quite the opposite: the Wii is the absolutely easiest example to disprove.

Nintendo had just come off of the Gamecube, which sold so poorly that they literally SHUT DOWN manufacturing of them for a time in order to clear stock. And it wasn't until they slashed the price to $100 and started selling the console at a loss (which they traditionally never do) to finally get sales back up again.

So not only could Nintendo not have known the Wii would sell like hotcakes, they were already understandably gun shy out of the gate due to their recent failures. But don't take Nintendo's own surprise- just look at literally every game publisher being astonished at the Wii sales, and promising to ramp up game development to accommodate (to the result of endless shovelware, mostly). Or, you know, how every gamer was equally surprised that the Wii was selling so well. Or the fact that Nintendo opened up an entirely new production line to meet demand once it became apparent the Wii was a hit.

Which, naturally, bit them with the Wii U, as they had to slow production on that once it became apparent that the console was a flop.

This isn't rocket science, but you people really are trying to make it out to be. I'm more curious how you think companies have crystal balls to see what will be hot and what will be not.

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So, the game has already sold more than every Animal Crossing game ever, second highest selling game in March, and also third-highest selling Nintendo launch game in history. I figured as much.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/best-selling-games-of-march-2020-us-animal-crossin/1100-6476302/

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Ferarri619 posted...

So, the game has already sold more than every Animal Crossing game ever, second highest selling game in March, and also third-highest selling Nintendo launch game in history. I figured as much.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/best-selling-games-of-march-2020-us-animal-crossin/1100-6476302/

And that's without counting digital sales! That's awesome.

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What's the better selling March game and the two better launch titles? I have an idea, but I'm lazy to check.

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pedro45 posted...

What's the better selling March game and the two better launch titles? I have an idea, but I'm lazy to check.

Ferarri misread I think. ACNH was the top-selling March game, and is the 2nd best-selling game in all of 2020.

According to NPD, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is not only the best-selling game of March, it's also the second-best selling game of 2020 so far in the US. It became the third-highest launch month in terms of physical dollar and unit sales of any Nintendo published game in the history of NPD's tracking, behind only Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and 2008's Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Additionally, its launch month sales alone have exceeded the lifetime sales of all other individual Animal Crossing games, making New Horizons the best-selling game in the series to date.

Best-Selling March 2020 Games (US):
Animal Crossing: New Horizons*
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
MLB: The Show 20
Resident Evil 3
NBA 2K20
Doom Eternal*
Persona 5: Royal
Grand Theft Auto V
Borderlands 3
Mario Kart 8: Deluxe*
Nioh 2
Red Dead Redemption II
FIFA 20
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*
Pokmon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX*
Madden NFL 20
Just Dance 2020
Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order
Mortal Kombat 11
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: Remastered
*Digital sales not included.

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