Nintendo's NES Classic Edition Re-Release Coming In Late June

Nintendo is re-releasing its NES Classic Edition console in a month and a half, with the American branch of the company attaching a June 29 release date to the new batch of the product that proved to be extremely popular in late 2016, having sold out in every market where it was available. The Japanese entertainment giant is now hoping to keep up with the demand in a more effective manner, having said it’s planning to have the NES Classic Edition available for the entire second half of the year. When the console first hit the market in November of 2016, it went out of stock almost immediately, though the initial batch was always targeted at collectors and not the mass market, according to Nintendo.

While some industry analysts initially speculated the company has been testing the market response to the NES Classic Edition a year and a half ago, the long delay between the first and second release of the console isn’t indicative of that scenario; if Nintendo always planned to bring the revamped variant of the retro gadget to more consumers, it would have likely been quicker to respond to the initial popularity of the NES Classic Edition and capitalize on it last year. While many classic NES games are now being ported to Android, the console itself proved to be a popular gift and a collector’s item when it first launched a year and a half back, with Nintendo now expecting a similar response to the new batch. The SNES Classic Edition should also be available throughout the second half of the year, according to the company. The second retro console sold over five million units so far, according to the video game firm’s own data.

The online subscription service for the Switch portable console will feature 20 NES games that will rotate periodically once it launches in September, though the system still lacks a Virtual Console that gamers have been asking for since its early 2017 debut. The global popularity of the NES Classic Edition may be related to that state of affairs, with Nintendo still giving no indication of planning a Switch Virtual Console. The June 29 release date marks the global return of the system that should once again be available in all Western markets, priced at $59.99.

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