[quote name='kayne2000']exactly its more than likely because nintendo likes to low print anything not named mario,zelda or metroid. fire emblem games in the US usually just up and go OOP at some random point in the future. the wii one did, the GC one did, im sure the DS one has too by now, i know a GBA did.
why nintendo does this ill never know. why they cant be like microsoft and just print as many copies as people want ill never know.
but then again when you sit on games like fire emblem and xenoblade that could sell millions and fail to advertise the hell out of them of course they dont sell.
the only reason i know about fire emblem is cause i randomly blind bought the GC one and got hooked and since then have had to actually google and search out info on new games in the series.[/QUOTE]
Nintendo knows what they are doing in their pricing strategy.
Nintendo has a different strategy than MS and Sony. They typically do not drop the price of their 1st party titles, so people don't sit and wait for it to be $20 in the clearance bin a week later. A lot of people wait for most other games to drop to $20 or less before picking up.
Printing unlimited typically means there is a ton of stock and the price needs to drop to move it, meaning a lot of cheap games and Nintendo does not want to be known for making a lot of cheap games, they pride themselves on game quality.
I agree that something like Xenoblade could use another limited print run, but I suspect that title might be in licensing limbo more than just Nintendo's choice, and I doubt they could sell "millions" of more copies, but certainly "thousands."
The push into digital once a title has sold out and is "rare" will help push people to buy the physical game on release when Nintendo still has the ability to just keep the printers running (which saves on cost, setting up a second print run incurs a lot of additional setup costs), but still offer them the option to buy it digitally if they can't find it in store once they have stopped printing. This would be a good solution for something like Xenoblade.
And now you know.