Nintendo's not-AI, not-a-game toy

soared

It’s a toy. How is this making any buzz, headlines, etc. Go to any store, go to the toy aisle, and 99% of the toys are not AI generated, etc. Lazy clickbait from everyone.

CoolGuySteve

The article says it starts to repeat after a few days but with flash memory prices being what they are couldn’t they have loaded something like a hundred thousand little voice clips on a $15 32GB micro sd card? Might require AI to generate them all but the device would still be offline

crims0n

One of the things I love about Nintendo is their (estimated) 1.5 trillion yen cash reserve allows them to just... do whatever they want. It frees them up to take risks and ignore market trends. More times than not, their zany ideas have worked out for them.

airstrike

Posted on a website designed by Claude, ironically

libertine

Here's my take, this is more of a symptom instead of a statement. Nintendo is a brand that's loved by millions, and they've been making toys for more than 100 years - and this is just another toy. It doesn't need to be a missed opportunity to fulfill it's role while it's a safe toy 6+ years old. As for the price, if you want to have healthy margins, $35 for a custom product isn't anything out of this world if it the COGS is 5$-8$, and distributors buy it with a 40%-50% discount over MSRP, so with marketing costs Nintendo makes like 10$-15$ per flower sold? Like what do these people expect? Nintendo to make 2$-3$ per product sold? For it being sold out, it's just a sign of the times - people want to be the first to have something, to show for, to collect (which is insane), to scalp, you name it. It's a consumption disease where people are parting their money for the wrong reasons, and that has an impact on the market. This is a kids product, and you have grown people hoarding this stuff, and complaining - like these reviews...it's insane. If Nintendo was like Lego, they would sell this for 65$ and I bet you it would be sold out in a week as well. Maybe the problem starts with these reviews and to have grown ups leaving room for kids and parents to figure out this stuff. You can be a Nintendo fan, and enjoy their products, without investing so much into a kids toy. I think this product is spot on in terms of design, functionality and price for 6 years and older. It's just that too much people are ruining this experience.

hmokiguess

Meanwhile Casio in Japan be like https://www.casio.com/us/moflin/

strogonoff

Sensationalising “a simple $35 desk toy” selling out in a week is disingenuous and (in at least one sense of the word) sloppy journalism if we consider that said toy is merch for a product that once won Guinness World Record as the best-selling video game of all time and which has such cult status that a second-hand unopened copy recently got sold for multiple millions of dollars. Respectfully, and not to detract from Nintendo’s chops in any way, but I suspect almost any genuine product that is Super Mario Bros. themed is guaranteed to sell very well; the bar is very low when a franchise is this well-recognized. [0] Possibly in more than one way…