It's a demand generator. Now that people 'think' it's discontinued, they'll wait a little longer, then make a shit load of them. Money will be made. Personally, buy a crappy battery pack for the Wiimote. Hook it up to the fucking Wii U or phone USB AC adapter. Plug your Wavebird adapter into the ext adapter of the Wiimote (these are around $10-$20 on eBay). There, you have your stupid adapter. Clearly people rang up Nintendo and ordered them over the phone, and bought a bundle of them. Now people are bidding for them like it's the only one ever made. Honestly... inflation is so easily done now.
I assume its not region locked however its still easy to get from Nintendo Australia. I just rung them up last week and it turned up a few days ago (Im in New Zealand). Box was all damaged during shipping but device itself is fine. Think it was something like $25aud and shipping to my country was about 15. So get in contact with your Australian or New Zealand friends EDIT!! https://twitter.com/NintendoAUNZ/status/539991608901394432 Turns out I got lucky as I ordered on the 2nd of December and this twitter message appeared on 2nd of December so I must of got one of the last ones
You shouldn't blame Nintendo for not being able to have exactly enough of them at launch. It's very difficult to know how many to have on hand. Plus it's made more difficult by scalpers that obviously are part of the reason why it seems like there isn't enough. You could also blame people willing to pay that much for the adapter from a scalper. Some of it though might actually be one person buying it for a premium hoping to then resell it for an even higher amount.
I couldn't expect them to have exactly enough at launch, but if they had done anything to gauge the interest (very very high, especially after it was discovered that people could use 2 of them for up to 8 GC controllers), they would not have run out within hours. Yeah the scalpers are jerks, and the people trying to resell them at a higher profit are worse, but Nintendo really dropped the ball on this one.
Just received an e-mail from the dutch Nintendo Support Team.. They confirm that the adapter will be in stores again in 2015.
I can sort of agree with this statement for the Amiibos, as I think many people are surprised by the demand of certain characters. But for the Wii U adapters, it's definitely 100% Nintendo's Supply chain a fault. A terrible miscalculation on their part. They flat out didn't have enough, it has nothing to do with scalpers, the adapters were well gone before people even thought about scalping them. Once they were all gone they fed the fire pretty quickly though.
Mayflash has been making GameCube controller adapters for awhile now. They don't support 4 controllers but I mean if you REALLY want to use your GC controller on your Wii U, there are options besides this one.
Good news is I've seen them come in and out of stock locally a couple times. So Nintendo is pumping the Wii U adapters out, and now with christmas shopping over the demand has simmered down a bit.
The demand will slow down as more people get them. It's just stupid people give in and spend $100 on a $20 item.
Here's another knock off, cheaper then the Mayflash one. http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free...mecube-Controller-to-for-Wii/32281104866.html
Haha that's just your typical scalpers and fake collectors who collect for investment not gaming aspect of it. Yeah sure Nintendo is part of the blame but there is something wrong when I walk into a ToysRus ans see a fxxxing 45-year old loser who buys three of the same amibos and next thing you notice is that the next sunday he is flipping them out to teenagers for twice the price at the flea market. Let's face it, who doesn't want more money, and the video games being a huge part of our modern society, there going to be more and more of these doushbags milking the the pot of money.
Have you now seen the frekin amiibos. They are insane, I want ike but I can't I am not hopping on the Amiibo train
I already am I have two: Samus (which i got with the game) and Rosalina (which was a UK import that I got a week or 2 early.) It sucks that the 3rd one I want (Meta Knight) is exclusive to Best Buy here in America. Like what is this? Transformers or the blue Galaxy S5's and Beats Pills?
The only Amiibo I'm going to get anytime soon are Sonic and Pac-Man. Other than that the only one I'd consider getting is Pikachu, and they're pumping out those continuously.
That's Nintendo for you, Look at the Amiibo scalping. Hell even I'm tempted to get the Mega Man one. Great minds.....
