Nintendo Switch 2 Pre-Order Sales were a MESS!
The Nintendo Switch 2 had been announced to be available for pre-orders starting on April 24th at midnight, which includes its bundle with Mario Kart World as well as the game individually. As anyone would expect, fans immediately jumped at the chance to go online or in person to preorder the electronics. I guess that means the whole “drop the price” thing was never going to affect the game’s sales after all.
So, gamers everywhere went online and…the results were NOT pretty! The preorders went live on sites such as Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Amazon, and Gamestop but because so many were going online to be the first ones to preorder it, many bugs and errors occurred. This resulted in some orders getting canceled, some not even getting a confirmation email, and then some had their items removed before they could checkout. Due to the high demand for the Switch 2, Nintendo’s president, Shuntaro Furukawa even issued a statement prior to the preorder date,
“The company’s storefront has received 2.2 million applications to preorder the new console in Japan alone. That’s a number that “far exceeds our expectations, and far exceeds the number of Nintendo Switch 2 consoles that can be delivered from the My Nintendo Store on June 5th.”
So with that, fans may have to worry about their Switch 2 not even arriving on the day of release. Nintendo even reiterated this by stating that delivery by June 5th is NOT guaranteed, what with all these issues occurring worldwide.
That’s concerning for many as we all want to play the game right from the get go, but now you’re saying we may have to wait another week? Pre Orders continued to experience more and more mania as more sites such as Best Buy, Walmart, and Gamestop continued to get error pages and much of the consoles and games were sold out because of how many insatiable fans were flocking to the online sites. This also increased already long wait times, catapulting many into impatience and frustration.
Numerous gaming insiders and creators all expressed their frustration online saying how the online experience was not well for them. But that’s not the worst part of it all, either. Kotaku even reported that eBay had dozens of resale listings for the new console, many of them being sold for upwards of $700. According to the outlet, while some of the listings appear to be real, others seem to be fake, generated to target bots and those looking to resell at wildly inflated prices. This is what people call scalping, and it’s something that happens extraordinarily often, especially when it comes to new console releases.
This is genuinely a scary moment as people out there possibly could’ve been scammed by scalpers or bots who pretended to be selling the console and then get the money, and the only winner would be the scammers on the site. Fans on reddit expressing their anger and experiences with their preorder journeys:
“Best Buy kicked me out, let me back in, and told me it was sold out 19 minutes later. Buddy of mine who got in after me was able to purchase the same console before I was even kicked out of the queue. I have a feeling that Best Buy is more of a lottery system than a queue.”
“I finally got through on Target, but I had to re-enter my credit card the first time (missing out) and then spend another 30 minutes refreshing trying to do it again.”
This isn’t the first time that a new game console has dealt with issues regarding pre orders, other consoles such as Playstation and Xbox have dealt with this, just like the Switch 2; Obtaining a Playstation was extremely difficult, had high demand, website crashes and limited availability, sound familiar? The same story applies to Xbox and their console Xbox Series X, according to Polygon, error pages and long wait times with no changes online despite Microsoft’s promises that they shouldn’t worry; You can see how that turned out.
It’s almost like this is to be expected with every new console being released. All fans want to be the first to get their hands on it, both early and on launch day, so no matter what, we should be prepared for the worst and not flip out in case something bad happens, especially if the console is at high demand like the Switch 2.
However, there was SOME light at the end of the tunnel, as luck would have it. Gamestop’s in-person pre-order was rather smooth, and lines were of course long and there were signs to indicate how many Switch 2’s were left to pre-order so disappointment was inevitable for those at the back of the line but at least they give notice and not just tell you that they’ve run out of pre-orders while you’re still in line .
Regardless of this positive news shared, the online pre orders were not well-received and many expressed that Nintendo should plan for things like this way more in advance to prevent such a thing from happening again in the late future.
