Come on Dave, Nintendo are the masters of exploiting scarcity. Is it genuine scarcity, or carefully planned scarcity? They ain’t telling.
I’ll bet all those third party sellers who have a bunch of NES Classic accessories sitting on shelves right now would like to know.
Never change my man, never change.
Switch numbers with admitted production issues are about a million shy of what PS4 did in the same time frame… and those were a pain in the ass to find. But yep, definitely Dave being overly apologetic for Nintendo per usual.
No other company that has been selling physical goods as long as Nintendo hs could possibly so incompetent when it comes to supply chain and production. There is no practical limit to the number of mobile technology based devices like the Switch, NES Classic or SNES Mini that can be manufactures in China. Nintendo simply refuses to increase production to meet demand in the way any other rational business would.
I think that’s a hard claim to defend with regards to the Switch because they’ve gone above and beyond to have as many units on shelves as possible, including flying stock to the US for launch. That’s incredibly expensive and not the kind of thing you need to do to drum up artificial scarcity.
Much more believable is that they can’t just whip up a few million units instantly given they’re competing with Apple for components. There aren’t too many companies that are going to win that fight.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.macrumors.com/2017/05/30/apple-supply-chain-nintendo-switch/amp/
Literally everyone in the world making phones, tablets, streaming boxes, flash drives or SSDs is technically competing with Apple for NAND. That’s an excuse, not an actual explanation for their low production numbers because everyone else is able to manage.
Yeah I don’t know why I bother listening to the WSJ. Shoulda checked with Brad.
Almost no one wants that shit so they only have to make like 500 to meet demand. People want Nintendo products and people want iPhones so the manufacturers struggling to keep up. Apple can’t keep iPhones in stock for the first 4 months of a release either.
I mean, who cares why they are scarce. Here’s what it comes down to, a story in two parts:
Or, you know, just order one and wait. I got my Splatoon edition the day it launched by ordering it a month in advance. Can’t say the same for my Oculus Rift or my 1080.
Digital Foundry on the Switch upgrade from 3DS Monster Hunter XX
Apple manufactures more each month than Nintendo does all year. They run into legitimate manufacturing limits, but it’s still usually with some esoteric part like the sapphire superglass for their camera lenses or whatever weird new sensor they’ve added to the line. Any jackass can call China and order a 32GB NAND flash chip in huge quantities. Nintendo has like 9 billion dollars in cash in the bank. If they wanted to double production of Switch they could at the drop of a hat and the only reason they haven’t is because they don’t want to, no matter what some employee told the WSJ.
I’m debating whether to grab two new joycons or a pro controller. While I’ve heard only positive things about the pro controller, it would be great to be able to play games with four players.
Is this the memory card that the Switch uses?
Yes, I don’t see why this wouldn’t work on Switch. It supports SDXC up to a max of 2TB (which obviously don’t exist yet).
But it may be worth considering a smaller but faster UHS-3 card than this UHS-1, though I’m not sure how much difference it makes in practical application.
Speaking of …
Nintendo Partners with Western Digital to Create Licensed Nintendo Switch SanDisk Memory Cards
64 GB and 128 GB Versions Will be Available in Stores Starting in October
According to digital foundry, UHS 1 is actually a teeny bit faster on the Switch than UHS 3, so this 400G card is the best one could get right now.
If Nintendo directly supports UHS 3 some day, maybe that will change.
Are they slower than the game cartridges?
Cartridges are ever so slightly faster - there’s not much in it. Fastest is the Switch’s internal storage.
Here’s the DF article @Deadline refered to:
No, carts are slowest per digital foundry. The ordering was consistent in their tests:
Worth keeping in mind that all seem rather quick, and the diff from 1 thru 4 are roughly 15%. The diff from 2 thru 4 is around 5 percent.
It will be interesting to see whether Skyrim has issues with load times on the Switch. It used to be horrific on the 360 and PS3, but I suspect this is an area where the Switch will be closer to the current gen.
