Nintendo says 2.3 million people somehow grabbed an NES Classic

The NES Classic is officially dead, even if some stores are still getting their last shipments, it's dead. Nintendo announced that the console will no longer be in production and that it had never been intended to be anything more than available for a limited time.

Before the NES Classic went out of production, retailers were constantly sold out of the device. The president and chief operating officer of Nintendo of America, Reggis Fils-Aime, has detailed that the NES Classic managed to sell 2.3 million units.

That means that somehow 2.3 million people managed to get their hands on the device, but doesn't bear into account how many of those people were dirty scalpers that purchased more than one console at any given time only to flip them and sell them for six times the retail price on eBay. (/end rant)

Fils-Aime went on to detail that the 2.3 million people that grabbed the NES Classic were the very same people that managed to get Nintendo to add extra lifespan to the console.

"We had originally planned for this to be a product for last holiday," Fils-Aimé told TIME. "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.

"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."

Basically, they killed the NES Classic so they could focus on the Switch (or perhaps drive sales to the Switch amidst the Nintendo high).