It was pretty clear this was intended to be a holiday 2016 item and that's it. I don't get the clamor over it either. I see virtually zero value in it unless you just really wanna play a handful old NES games for $60.
I think so. The decision to discontinue the product was known 1.5 months ago in Sweden (the wording at one retailer was something like "Nintendo has decided to...").
It was way too easy to hack the product IMO.
Because they want you to buy a Switch or a 3DS, where you can pay for VC titles. They make much more money that way, and create an install base for most other titles, so in short they don't want you to buy an NES classic when there is a Switch you should be buying.
This decision suggests to me that VC might be launching within the next couple of weeks, to catch all the sad out-of-luck buyers with Switch VC.
All of these. Temp product to sell through the 2016 holidays until the Switch launch. Became too easy to hack with hundreds of Nintendo games, making it a nuisance with no other purpose (you can hack a Wii U to run emulators but it can still be used to buy games) and potentially cutting into VC sales. And finally, the official Switch VC is coming soon.
It probably wasn't making Nintendo that much money either, perhaps a drop in the bucket compared to Switch hardware and software sales. I think they know something we don't and that's the possibility that the market for the NES Classic is nearly saturated that it no longer makes sense to continue making it. The frustration in this thread is no indication that it could still move big numbers like it did when it was a must-buy Christmas item.
This literally makes no sense.
Yes it does. Not to the relatively few people on a gaming message board who wanted one, but the NES Classic is basically done in many ways to Nintendo.