NES Classic Edition tease: Amazon says it has ‘exciting announcements’ coming soon

Amazon is up to something, and it is probably of interest to anyone who is interested in Nintendo’s throwback console.

The NES Classic Edition, a tiny $60 gaming box that looks like the original Nintendo Entertainment System and features 30 of that console’s games (read our review), is nearly impossible to find, but that’s not stopping one of the web’s largest retailers from teasing everyone about it. In a tweet today, the Amazon Video Games account claimed it has a “couple of exciting announcements to make in the coming weeks” for “NES Classic fans.” It didn’t give any other hints, but let’s hope that it’s getting ready to reveal that it has plenty left in stock to ship before the gift-giving holidays.

NES Classic fans: we've got a couple exciting announcements to make in the coming week. Stay tuned for more info soon!

— Amazon Video Games (@AMZNVideoGames) December 7, 2016

Even while Nintendo’s Wii U is on the way out, the company still has one of the most popular gaming consoles this holiday. The NES Classic Edition is easily one of the holiday season’s hottest gifts. Whenever it goes on sale at Walmart or Amazon, the NES Classic sells out almost immediately. And even when you do get an order in, you may have to wait before it’ll show up. I placed an order for one on November 22 from Walmart’s online store, and the retailer still hasn’t even shipped it more than three weeks later due to overselling its supply.

The demand is so high that some people have set up bots to purchase all available NES Classics. Those scalpers then flip the NES mini on eBay and elsewhere — often for an extreme profit.

If Amazon announces an easy to way to find and buy an NES Classic for $60 without getting cutout by scalpers, then that is big news. But who knows? It’s probably going to announce a Kindle Classic Edition that can play classic games from the Amazon Fire Phone.