In response to today’s news that Amazon will not be selling the upcoming Wii U, Cheap Ass Gamer owner Cheapy D tweeted that the potential answer may be on IGN’s message board.
IGN poster Sarabellum1976-tk posted this in response to an Amazon thread regarding sales of the 3DS XL on the site.
“TL;DR
The Amazon vs. Nintendo squabble about selling 3DS consoles has been dragging on for about a year. Supposedly, it all started off last year when the 3DS launch was less than stellar. Amazon had a lot of unsold 3DS consoles sitting around their warehouses, and they decided to start demanding a bigger wholesaler discount – equal to what Wal-Mart receives. (The Amazon vs. Wal-Mart soap opera is for another thread.)
Anyway, this request was flatly denied. Amazon requested permission to sell the consoles at a discount. Denied again. To strengthen their case, and try to bully their way into the bigger discount, Amazon complained that they have to replace a lot of the systems because of the screen scratching problem, and starting making a big production about sending each and every one back to Nintendo, wanting a full & immediate credit, which started to overwhelm Nintendo’s intake for seconds merchandise, which started to make Nintendo really mad, because Amazon was sending over units that had such slight, almost nonexistent problems, that they were not used to being bothered with such trivial things. (Supposedly.) Previously, and for other consoles, Amazon just sold returned (working) consoles at a discount on their “Warehouse Deals” page, which Nintendo doesn’t like, but Amazon claimed that they were losing ALL their profit margin on 3DSes with shipping faulty systems back to NOA, as well as dealing with unhappy customers that were leaving and/or not spending as much as previously.
Nintendo smelled bull (and rightly so!) and fired back and said that there WAS no problem with the scratching, and there was no way they were going to piss off all the other big wholesalers by giving Amazon a sweeter deal (when Nintendo already considers Amazon the scourge of the business world for not having any brick & mortar stores – which is why Amazon wasn’t getting the Wal-Mart discount in the first place!) Now keep in mind, this was all going down right about the time the price drop was announced, which was another thing that pissed off Amazon. Nobody was buying 3DSes after the price drop was announced, and Amazon does not like having a warehouse full of crap that’s not moving. Their business model is structured around moving out cold merchandise by marking stuff down (which of course Nintendo will not allow them to do on consoles.) Then, Nintendo poured gasoline on the fire by permitting Wal-Mart (and only Wal-Mart) to sell consoles at the new, lowered price a couple of days BEFORE the official date of the price drop, without losing their margin on the old stock. Amazon has (reportedly) not bought 3DS consoles direct from NOA since that day. (Though they’ve occasionally picked up some 3DSes from other wholesalers.)
Neither party cares to detail whether it is Amazon refusing to buy, or Nintendo refusing to sell. Rumor has it that it’s Nintendo that put Amazon on the **** list, but I’ve heard at least one pretty well-informed Amazon employee that says that it’s their buyer that’s doing it. I tend to think it’s Amazon.
~~~
This is just bad blood between these two companies, and some sort of power struggle between the buyer at Amazon and the wholesaler account rep at Nintendo. It has little-to-nothing to do with the screen scratching, and everything to do with money and corporate egos.”
Later in the thread when asked about Amazon Canada’s ability to sell hardware the poster responded with
“Yes, but the Canadian operation of Amazon is actually a separate branch of the company. Whole different set of people. Different warehouses, different distribution.
Apparently the Canadians don’t get tarred with the same brush, since their site always has current stock of Nintendo product.”
Source: Cheapy D, Sarabellum1976-tk
The scratching problem and the deteriorating D-pad are a real problem of the original model, Nintendo is at fault here by acting like there was none when in fact the design of the vanilla 3DS is horrendous and the reason I waited for the XL version to get one. My friend’s 3DS looks like a mess now and it isn’t even a year old, there weren’t problems like that with the DS lite and DSi.
I call BS. I have a launch (both black and a blue one for my wife) and I don’t see these scratches. I DO see an occasioanl line on the motton screen from the banner of the top screen and marks on the top plastic from the circle pad. THis is all simply ONLY occurring while in a case or pouch and traveling with it or carrying. The pressure of it squeezing is the issue. Close it up nicely and place it in your cradle and I NEVER see the issue. Not exactly a design defect, just something that kind of happens. Buy a $3 cleaning cloth and place it inbeteen the clam shell when closed and it’ll be fine.
call BS all you want since you haven’t seen it, the proof is out there that there IS a scratching problem……and i would never known about it until it happened TO ME, and then i looked it up on the net. this is a price-drop model, when mario 3d land came out. IT’S A REAL PROBLEM, and i keep a soft cloth between the screens AT ALL TIMES when it’s closed to minimize the damage. Squeezing IS NOT THE ONLY CAUSE, I barely played mine and noticed it when I picked it up one day. Just because YOU don’t have a messed up screen, doesn’t mean MANY, MANY other people DON”T.
I haven’t had any problems with either screen. Occasionally I get marks on the top screen but one wipe from my t-shirt and the problem disappears. No one I know has said anything about scratching problems and I haven’t heard anything about any problems from anyone but those who have a bit of a thing against Ninty. Just because YOU have a messed up screen, doesn’t mean EVERYONE else DOES.
I had to send a 3DS XL back to Nintendo, witha scratch on the top screen, straight out of the box, they said the top screen was scratched by the lower screen, and sent me a new unit with some screen protectors, this is a 3DS XL, you would think they would have fixed this problem in the redesign, I guess not.
What the hell is wrong with you people? There really is no such thing as a scratch proof screen. Even the almighty IPhone screens are not scratch proof like they claim. It’s all for marketing. Think how much it would cost to have real glass in every electronic screen merchandise you purchase? You couldn’t afford any of it! We live in a world full of dust and particles and unless u live in a static free deatomized home with constant atmospheric vacuum these things CANNOT be avoided. Electronics collect dust and when you go to clean them you risk the particles and grains scratching fine lines into the screens.
I’ve had my original 3ds since launch. I have a hard shell Nintendo case for it AND I keep a cloth in between. If you were to see it you’d think it’s brand new. It’s all in how you take care of your things and it’s obvious alot of you don’t know how or don’t care.
My opinion and facts are Nintendo makes quality product and amazon is just a pissy online retailer that doesn’t want to accept the consequences of risk. So if they choose now not to sell Wii U then that’s their risk not to take again and not an entire failure of Nintendo’s product.