 It's the dawn of the final day. Nintendo has insisted for months that several of its Super Mario anniversary games, Super Mario 3D All-Stars, Super Mario Bros. 35, and the Super Mario Bros. Game & Watch will no longer be available after 31 March. Fans have expressed frustration at this decision, with some complaining that Nintendo is deliberately limiting the sale of these games to drive up demand. So why limit the sale of these games? What's Nintendo's logic here? When asked about this strange business decision last year, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser said, I use a simple word, celebration. It just, this is a celebration of Mario's 35th anniversary. There are various ways that we're celebrating Mario's 35th, and with some of these titles, we felt it was an opportunity to release them for a limited period of time. Yeah, at this point the decision was really made around that celebration feature and aspect. We can't speak to plans beyond the end of March. Chances are, if you're not watching this video on the day of release, you'll already know more about Nintendo's plans beyond March, so we won't speculate too wildly. Nintendo's strategy here is certainly confusing, with some games such as Super Mario 3D All-Stars getting a limited release, while other games such as Super Mario 3D World plus Bowser's Fury remaining available indefinitely. If the plan was to artificially drive up demand for 3D All-Stars, it seems to have worked. Bowser said, They've done very, very well. Super Mario 3D All-Stars has sold over 2.6 million units in the US alone, as of December 2020, and so clearly consumers have been able to jump in and enjoy that, and it's not strategy that we're going to be using widely, but it's one we thought was very unique for the actual anniversary. It's difficult to say whether 3D All-Stars sold more in six months than it would have over the Switch's lifetime if it were available long term. There is, though, another factor to consider. It is also worth noting that Nintendo's 2020 schedule was somewhat disrupted by, well, 2020. Rumours and leaks suggested that 3D All-Stars was intended to be made available much earlier in the year, although we don't know how much weight to give these claims. Either way, though, it's no secret that Nintendo's release schedule had to be reworked on the fly throughout the year. Bowser said, Something unique about Nintendo is, our content is released year round. But then, we also look at the content coming from our third party publishing partners, whether those be AAA houses or indie developers, and figure out how to slot those in. And then, one thing we feel is unique about Nintendo is the strength of our evergreen catalogue, and the Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and how would we fit those into our messages? So we have news, and we have conversations that we can have year round. We had to be flexible, and we had to be nimble, and move those around. The decision to limit the Super Mario Bros. Game and Watch in particular feels reminiscent of the NES Classic console. Reggie Fieser may once stated that this nostalgic hardware offering was only ever intended to carry Nintendo through an otherwise quiet holiday period. He said, We had originally planned for this to be a product for last holiday. We just didn't anticipate how incredible the response would be. Once we saw that response, we added shipments and extended the product for as long as we could to meet more of that consumer demand. The Mario Anniversary games and hardware have had a longer release window and been more widely available, so it makes sense that Nintendo isn't looking to extend their availability in the same way. So why is Nintendo taking away all of this wonderful Mario goodness? Because… Nintendo. It seems that the company decided, for whatever reason, that a flurry of excitement over a limited release was more useful than turning these games into evergreen titles. All of this makes us excited to see what might be coming next.