NeoGAF member “D” recently had the chance to speak to a Nintendo of America representative about a variety of things including the West Coast port strike and the ultra-rare Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D New Nintendo 3DS XL console. For those hoping to be able to purchase one of those consoles from your local store then I’m afraid you’re in for disappointment as it truly was limited edition. Here’s what the Nintendo of America representative had to say.
- The westcoast port strike DIRECTLY affected Nintendo shipments for amiibo definitely. She said there are STILL January and February worth of amiibos on the shipping crates that have yet to be unloaded. The amiibos we DID get (like the previous wave of King Dedede, Sonic, etc.)..had to be delivered by air which cost them lots of money, which explains the shortage of certain characters. They of course don’t plan on keeping that up.
- There will be a restock on older waves of amiibos, especially for rare characters like Wii Fit Trainer, etc. She explained they only made so many cause Nintendo thought the demand wouldnt be there due to the franchises for some of the characters being obscure, but she acknowledged they received TONS of emails from people that can’t find/are looking for these characters…and the are trying to do what they can to get them out there but due to the port strike, a lot of those characters are still on the ships..in which cause she said to keep checking store for some of the older characters to appear.
- Wave 4 or 5 (whichever one it is I dunno) that has Ness and Charizard, etc, are having their release dates and preorders held at due to the port strike as WELL because Nintendo wants to make sure the situation with the strike will not affect shipments again and so they can gauge the market for demand, which will determine how many to produce. She said once most the cargo gets offloaded and everything is fine with everything and the market and they talk to retailers about stock, they’ll announce.
- The Majora’s Mask n3DSXL is absolutely gone. It truly WAS a limited edition release and there are NO stock anywhere in ANY warehouse and there are NO plans to restock whatsoever. Funny thing is she said retailers were informed about 6 months before its release and ordered accordingly. Chalk the scarcity to the retailers..cause they ordered how much they “felt” they were gonna need.
- She didn’t know anything about a release date or Nintendo Direct for the remaining MK8 or Mewtwo DLC. The Directs are kind of random and she doesn’t really get any sort of heads up but she said if Nintendo wants to show gameplay of something then the Directs are the only way they’ll do it.
Thanks, MasterPikachu6
Interesting. Not all bad, not all good, but at least it’s news on the situation and that’s all I wanted from the start. Finally, thank you.
They said Wii Fit Trainer! There is hope!
http://mii-gamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/super-smash-bros-for-Wii-U-Wii-fit-trainer-1.jpg
Wii Fit Trainer could be a real woman, am I right? Her pale model is kinda freak.
glad i got one
Oh, how I love these anonymous sources…
The paper accepts everything, my friends.
Honestly, it still sounds sketchy to me. How come Nintendo doesn’t publicly address these problems? Instead, they decide to give out information to a person who calls themselves “D”? Okay I guess, lmao.
Also, is it normal for a Nintendo rep at Gamestop to know that kinda things? Apart from the fact that I’ve never even heard or seen of Nintendo reps being present in Gamestop stores (well, at least that’s not a thing here in Germany), how come they know so much about internal information? I honestly wouldn’t expect a random rep in a random Gamestop store to know about that kinda stuff.
I’m serious about these questions though, feel free to clarify things if I’m wrong about something.
But yea, it all just seems kinda hard to believe to me personally.
It’s some PR level silliness I’d say, fly in hundreds of Mario’s but none of the rarer ones…If wave four and five are still a hassle they can’t blame the port strike at all.
Exactly. I would put money on it, that it will be the same shitty situation it has been with amiibo’s. They really couldn’t blame the port strike before either, if anyone actually thought about it instead of just believing whatever PR bullshit a company spews.
It made no sense to begin with, like you said, that they were able to ship so many of the other amiibo’s like Mario, Peach ect. Yet the more popular ones haven’t been restocked in months in some areas.
They had no problem shipping a ton of Bowsers also.
http://www.nowinstock.net/videogaming/games/amiibo/
This site even keeps track of amiibo stock, and even dates the last time they were in stock in some retailers. The funny thing is, when Nintendo made the comment regarding the port strike it had ended already.
So why the hell is there still no new shipments of these more popular amiibo coming in?
I work for a Gamestop in the states and we see our Nintendo rep at least. She is super informed but rarely does she speak upon things until given permission. But yes, Nintendo needs to speak from a corporate headquarters release not some random “D”.
Regarding Splatoon, an easy fix for the mic thing for little kids would be to have a parental control option…how difficult is that… Nintendo already made a parental control option for the 3D effect on 3DS, can they not do something like that for mics on the Wii U?
Sometimes, I just don’t understand Nintendo…
The reason that won’t work is because most kids set their consoles up themselves and thus set the parental controls themselves and/or lie about their age so that parental controls are useless. Now if they made it to where Splatoon asks for your age and only allowed those 13+ or 16+ in age could use voice chat that may work. But even then kids could lie about their age, or word will get out as to why the game asks for your age and everyone cheats the system. And even then there are still a lot of immature teenagers and adults.
Ok, so are you saying that 3D parental controls on the 3DS were useless since day 1?
Yes. Although it’s not so much that they’re useless, but parents don’t actually make use of them. I don’t know of any parents who actually set up their child’s consoles or electronic devices in general unless they’re 4 or younger if even that. The 2DS for example takes away the 3D completely, so parents don’t even have to bother setting them up in the first place.
Who cares then? For the same reason, Nintendo can make parental controls for mics without getting into legal trouble, and let the rest enjoy it. In the end, it would be the parent’s fault for not setting it up, and parents these days should be well aware of what goes on in the online gaming community.
“Now if they made it to where Splatoon asks for your age and only allowed those 13+ or 16+ in age could use voice chat that may work.” No. What difference would that even make? You can’t control what others say. Someone might swear regardless of your age. Online interactions aren’t rated by the ESRB so it won’t be Nintendo’s fault if you hear some idiot start trash talking. That is why there could be an option to disable it.
And you left out the part where I said even adults and teenagers are immature. And I’m not saying that people shouldn’t cuss or take away the first amendment, I don’t cuss however, but I was saying those of an older age group are less likely to be as immature as those 12 and younger kids who make momma jokes all day. But even though that doesn’t apply to ALL 16+ people and there will still be people who go at it like sailors. So maybe instead if there was voice chat there could be separate rooms for basically the cursers and non-cursers. Idk I’m just throwing out ideas what are you going to do shoot me? *Holds hands in the air
No, no, no, no, no. It should just have regular voice chat. I don’t know why you think that trying to change it up is going to make any difference. Only thing that does is get on people’s nerves and it makes Nintendo look bad. Look at how they implemented it in Mario Kart 8. That is how you do NOT do voice chat.
Well maybe Nintendo will patch it in or something, but at the end of the day we know Nintendo is conservative and there’s nothing we can do about it. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but Nintendo is stubborn and they won’t change until it starts affecting their wallets.
I already know you’re still gonna buy it. Lol.
Most likely, but I’m going to wait until I find out more info. There’s many games coming out in May and I want to use my money wisely.
More info? We already know everything there is to know.
Reviews, opinions, insight, etc. things like that.
Ok. And what are these other games you’re talking about that release in May?
Well they’re not all released in May, but they’ll be out by then.
Story of Seasons
SMT: Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker
Puzzle & Dragonz + Super Mario Bros Edition.
Entrian Mystery Dungeon
Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX
Lord of Magna: Maiden Heaven
I’m not getting them all of course, at least not right now, but as far as deciding between one of those over Splatoon it’s a tough competition. I’m definitely getting Story of Seasons at the end of the month though. ^_^
Well, good luck deciding I suppose. I literally have no interest in any one of those games so I can’t help you there. Lol. I would just say get Splatoon.
I’m not surprised they all have their different niche and audience. I’m not a big fan of shooters, so although I will get Splatoon eventually it’s no rush for me.
Even easier fix, if you don’t like voice chat. Turn it off, like just about every other game in existence now that allows the same.
Parental controls are a complete waste of time anyway. Kids are smarter than that these days. If they want to get around the parental lock they will find a way, or they’ll just set it up themselves and lie about their age.
Nintendo needs to stop pointlessly trying to protect children they can and never will fully protect. It isn’t their responsibility to be worrying about kids, it is their parents job and responsibility to do so.
The world is a vicious, and sometimes completely retarded place. Sheltering kids from the real reality of how people actually are is doing no one any good. They just need better parents willing to teach their kids these things, so when they do come across them, they know how to handle these dumb situations properly instead of adding fire to them.
Kids who are sheltered, 99.9% of the time always turn out worse than those who weren’t. Cause when reality hits them, they have no damn idea how to take it in, because all their life they were told the world is filled with unicorns and rainbows.
Can’t be entirely true. EB Games in Canada announced they have MM3DSXL in stock on Twitter a few minutes ago.
Yeah, I actually saw a ton of them in a Gamestop I went to a few days ago.
If what they said about the mm3dsxl is true then stores were ordering these around aug. But people were not able to order from the retailers because it had not been announced. This frenzy for all this nintendo stuff did not start until dec. That being said how would they have known that they would sell any better than the link between worlds edition?
I know this is all easy to say but had retailers been able to allow preorders when they originally ordered or a few months after wouldn’t it have been easier for fans to get their hands on it instead of scalpers? Would scalping even had been an issue?
We” see if this is true in the next couple of months, and an announcement on when the amiibo cards are coming out would be nice too.
*We’ll
If I ever find a Marth amiibo in stores, I think I’ll faint. He’s the only one (other than the gold Mario) that I missed out on.
I had one…traded it for Megaman 7, Megaman X3, Metroid Prime 2, and Tales of Symphonia. Oh well.
this article lost all credibility when I read this
Wave 4 or 5 (whichever one it is I dunno)
look it up!
Regarding the part about the Majora’s Mask pre-order issues being the fault of the retailers – nah, I don’t buy it. I’ve heard enough in the past about how Nintendo has done this before, how even in this situation supposedly Nintendo had given retailers numbers and then completely retracted some of them (hence the massive amount of pre-order cancellations from Best Buy, etc), and finally you have Iwata himself who in a past interview says that they want to to make their products have a perceived “value” long into the future. They purposefully do this in order to build up the perception that all of their products have a high value because they don’t meet the supply and thus artificially create a much higher demand for it.