The NES Classic Edition has been a pretty strong hit for Nintendo – according to Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime when speaking to Time, the console managed to sell 2.3 million units. This is up from 1.5 million sales in February 2017 and despite the console being recently discontinued.

Speaking about plans to “focus on the future”, Fils-Aime said, “We had originally planned for this to be a product for last holiday. 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.”

Though the final shipments came about this month, stock is already sold out. Fils-Aime apologized for consumers who were “frustrated about not being able to find the system,” but also said that Nintendo “needs to drive” other areas. “We’ve got a lot going on right now and we don’t have unlimited resources.”

Besides that being the Nintendo Switch – which has sold 2.74 million units worldwide – that includes the rumoured SNES Classic that’s apparently arriving later this year.

Though Nintendo announced that the NES Classic Edition would have its last range of shipments this month, it apparently has something else coming for nostalgia fans. According to source that spoke to Eurogamer, the SNES Classic is already in development and will be out by Christmas 2017.

As per the site, the development of the SNES Classic is the biggest reasons why the NES Classic is going out of production. Nintendo has not offered a public statement to this report.

It’s interesting to see Nintendo going in this direction, especially given the high demand for the NES Classic. Having launched in November 2016, the miniature version of the classic console allowed fans to play games like Super Mario Bros., Castlevania, Donkey Kong, Metroid and much more. The NES Classic sold 1.5 million units by February 2017 and has had shortages since launch.

What are your thoughts on an SNES Classic though, especially if it comes with a classic titles like Super Mario World series, Super Metroid and so on? Let us know in the comments.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before- Nintendo launch a new item, but undership it to stores worldwide to the extent that only very few people can actually get their hands on one. This leads to a kind of self feeding hype and frenzy cycle, feeding the illusion of a product that’s a ‘hot’ one, causing more people to want one simply because of the hype. Nintendo have been legendary for this sort of thing- they did it with the Wii, they did it with Amiibos, and now they are doing it again with the NES Classic Edition.

The NES Classic Edition has been entirely sold out, with most stores, receiving very few units to begin with, selling out of their stock within minutes. The problem was further exacerbated by the simple fact that Nintendo had not allowed pre-orders for the system- the result now is that NES Classic Editions are being flipped on eBay and similar sites for hundreds of dollars.

For once, however, it seems like Nintendo are at least being transparent with fans- speaking on their Twitter, Nintendo assured fans that they were aware of the demand for the NES Classic, and that they would have enough in stock over the holidays. “The Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition system is a hot item, and we are working hard to keep up with consumer demand. There will be a steady flow of additional systems through the holiday shopping season and into the new year,” they said.

Which is great- but hey, maybe they shouldn’t have undershipped the damn thing so much to begin with. Hopefully the Switch launch is handled better, but with Nintendo planning on shipping only 2 million of them for the first month, I’m not too sure that it will be.