Nintendo’s manufacturing habits have been out of control lately. First the GameCube controller adapter sells out and

skyrockets to $100 on eBay, and they’ve been hard to find ever since. Then we hear that they might discontinue some Amiibo despite high demand, while others are already running out of pre-order availability. Between rumors, reports, and conflicting statements from Nintendo, the last few days have been some of the most confusing times to follow Nintendo news—I’ve admittedly had just as much trouble keeping up with it as you guys have. But now I’m here to nail it down and straighten out what the hell is going on.

Amiibo

It’s not hard to tell that some Amiibo are going to be kept around for a long time. Mario, Link, and Donkey Kong are some of Nintendo’s most widely beloved characters, and even the first wave editions are going to stay on the market as long as possible. Other characters, like Marth, Villager, and

Wii Fit Trainer, are in much shorter supply—and whether or not Nintendo is planning to stop producing those figures any time soon, there will come a day when the first wave of Amiibo is phased out, and characters like these will be the first to go. For this reason, it’s been widely recommended that collectors, or really anyone who wants a complete set of Amiibo, should buy these characters while they still can.

In comes Video Games Plus, a Canadian retailer who claims to have inside information from Nintendo that these three Amiibo—Marth, Villager, and Wii Fit Trainer—are officially being discontinued. It’s very curious that Nintendo would announce this information to a Canadian retailer with only two locations, as opposed to a sales giant like GameStop, or a news outlet like IGN. But Video Games Plus stuck to their guns, saying “we have nothing to gain by tweeting out lies.”

Shortly thereafter, we got two conflicting reports from Nintendo. First, the Assistant Manager of PR, David Young, plainly stated that

no Amiibo are being discontinued at this time. Later that day, Nintendo told Kotaku that certain Amiibo will not be restocked after they sell through their initial shipment.

In other words, no Amiibo characters are being

officially discontinued… but there are some that are officially not being continued.

It’s confusing as all hell, and to make matters worse, Nintendo won’t say which Amiibo are only being made in limited quantity, nor have they given us any sort of time frame for when we should expect these Amiibo’s shelf lives to end.

For all intents and purposes, it sounds like some Amiibo will be retired sooner than we expected. I don’t know why Nintendo is so scared of using the phrase “discontinued” for the Amiibo that are being phased out, and I’m even less sure why they don’t at least call them “limited edition” figures to drum up hype. But for us fans, let’s just make it easier on ourselves and consider Marth, Villager, and

Wii Fit Trainer to be officially discontinued.

We don’t know for sure that these characters will be phased out, and we don’t know if they’re the only ones that will be phased out. But the clock is definitely ticking on something, and these three Amiibo are a pretty safe bet.

UPDATE: Just minutes after posting this article, Desructoid was able to confirm that Toys”R”Us has sold out of Marth, Villager, and Trainer, and won’t be restocking any of them in the future.

UPDATE 2, Dec. 10: Nintendo of America has just provided us with an official statement, which reads, “Some amiibo were very popular at launch, and it is possible that some amiibo in the United States, Canada and Latin America may not be available right now due to high demand and our efforts to manage shelf space during the launch period. Certain sold-out amiibo may return to these markets at a later stage. We are continually aiming to always have a regular supply of amiibo in the marketplace and there are many waves of amiibo to come.”

Due to the above updates, it would seem that Nintendo is planning to continue selling these three figures at some point in the future—but when they’ll be available, and whether they’ll return exactly as they are today is still a mystery.

The Smash Bros. GameCube Controller Adapter

The story isn’t too different for the GameCube controller adapter, something that many fans consider a must-own peripheral if you’re going to play

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.

The problem is, it sold out almost immediately when it first hit the market, and every time it comes back in stock, it sells out just as fast. There’s clearly not enough supply to meet demand, and we could spend all day guessing why that might be. But conspiracy theories about artificial scarcity or

childish feuds with their manufacturer hardly get us any closer to the truth.

What we do know is that their supply, for whatever reason, is very low. So low, in fact, that Amazon has begun canceling people’s pre-orders for the device. EB Games Canada heard through the grapevine that Nintendo has currently ceased production on the adapter, but never indicates that they’ve ended production altogether. Meanwhile, Video Games Plus, the same retailer who tweeted about the Amiibo above, claims that the adapter has been completely discontinued.

Fast forward a day, and

the controller adapter is coming back in stock at GameStop. The next morning, Nintendo of Europe told Nintendo Life that they have not discontinued the GameCube adapter, and are doing “everything [they] possibly can to meet the demand which is currently outstripping supply.”

So all we know is that the adapter has not been officially discontinued in Europe, and Nintendo of Europe is trying frantically to meet demand. It’s not unreasonable, then, to assume that Nintendo’s other regional divisions are trying just as hard. But despite this, the Canadian PR wheel seems to believe that the adapter is no longer in production.

What I think most likely happened is that Nintendo only manufactured a handful of adapters to ship out and launch, saved a handful to roll out over time, and ended the manufacturing process, only to find out that they drastically underestimated demand—this would explain why some sources think the adapter is currently out of production. They sold out of their initial shipment in a heartbeat, their reserved supplies are quickly dwindling, and they’re doing what they can to make sure supply trickles out to retailers, in an effort to avoid a catastrophic wait time before new units hit the market—this would explain why retailers find them back in stock so sporadically, and why they still sell out so quickly. And I think everyone at Nintendo is scrambling to get the assembly lines running again, so they can keep the adapter coming for as long as we’re trying to buy it.

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