Nintendo sold 2.3m NES Classics

While reports suggest that a SNES Classic machine is forthcoming, Nintendo could have sold many more units of its NES Classic had it not discontinued it out of the blue. Now, according to comments by Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime to Time, we know that the NES Classic sold-in 2.3 million units globally. You can't always assume sold-in means sold through to consumers, but given how fast the NES Classic had been selling out, it's a safe bet this time.

After Nintendo saw how quickly the NES Classic sold the previously announced 1.5 million units, the company increased production. "We had originally planned for this to be a product for last holiday," Fils-Aime said. "We just didn't anticipate how incredible the response would be. Once we saw that response, we added shipments and extended the product for as long as we could to meet more of that consumer demand."

Fils-Aime declined to say anything further about whether Nintendo would ever bring the NES Classic back to stores, but he did hint that the company perhaps needed those manufacturing resources to be applied elsewhere.

"Even with that extraordinary level of performance, we understand that people are frustrated about not being able to find the system, and for that we really do apologize," he said. "But from our perspective, it's important to recognize where our future is and the key areas that we need to drive. We've got a lot going on right now and we don't have unlimited resources."