Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé has admitted the NES and SNES Classic mini consoles were made to help the company as the Wii U struggled.
As spotted by Nintendo Everything, Fils-Aimé spoke at the NYU Game Centre Lecture Series and explained Nintendo was making efforts to make things work during the Wii U era, including killing the 8GB model of the console. "The other thing we did is, in two successive years, we launched those micro legacy devices. If you remember those, right? The small NES and then the following year the small SNES," he explained, "We did that to sustain our business because we needed something to sell at volume come the holiday season. So it was a series of commercial ideas, knowing full well that… you know, the Wii U was on life support."
Of course, many had speculated this to be the case, especially with the NES Classic, given it was released in 2016 when the Wii U had almost nothing going on, but now we have a somewhat official word. It had already been a weak year with the likes of Star Fox Zero and Pokken Tournament disappointing, and then the only game released during the holiday season was the decent at times Paper Mario: Color Splash.
The SNES Classic had a bit more company with 2017 being a landmark year for Nintendo – which released two of the greatest games of all-time with Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey – but Nintendo likely wanted a contingency plan in case the Switch didn't pop off.
This also explains why the series never continued and Nintendo didn't bother with a Game Boy Classic, N64 Classic, or Virtual Boy Classic (maybe not the last one). Although 2018 also marked the launch of Nintendo Switch Online, the company probably saw a potential cross-contamination… even if N64 games wouldn't arrive on Switch for another three years.
