>>22964678Nintendo's worst nightmare is currently the idea of overshipping to retailers. The wiiu was overstocked for ages. Before even that, they showed they were terrified of it more than the average company with the issues that caused them to fight with amazon, which I believe had something to do with a disagreement on returns of unsold stock.
Thus, any character whose popularity was even a little in doubt got conservative print-runs. Immediately making more wasn't possible because getting anything done in a chinese factory requires a couple months lead time or more. More Marth, ike, and dedede are theoretically coming in a couple months. Some stores randomly got in more of captain falcon and little mac this week.
I guess one could argue they made things artificially scarce to drive people nuts, but "overwhelming risk-aversion" sounds more Nintendo's speed to me than "nefarious masterminds," and every time a rare one re-appears for a bit I feel more confident in that assessment.
