The Nintendo Switch 2 is coming soon. After briefly setting back US pre-orders, you’ll be able to finally reserve your unit tomorrow, and more importantly, at an unchanged price, for now. You might want to get to it if you’re serious about buying one, though.
In a statement released via the company’s official Japanese X (formerly Twitter) account, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa revealed that the My Nintendo Store in Japan alone had received a remarkable 2.2 million applications for preorders. Mr. Furukawa stated this figure “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.” While Nintendo shouldn’t have an issue eventually fulfilling the amount of pre-orders, this does mean that a big chunk of those who sought to reserve their unit early won’t receive their console on the launch date.
As a reminder, Nintendo is using a lottery system for Switch 2 pre-orders in a bunch of markets. In the case of Japan, while Nintendo did not disclose the precise number of units allocated for the My Nintendo Store’s launch day lottery, Mr. Furukawa conceded that “a significant number of customers” who submitted applications via this channel will unfortunately not secure a console in this first wave. Customers who are not selected in the initial draw will be automatically re-entered into a second lottery for a chance at securing a console from a later batch. So, for Japanese folks looking to buy a console, they will eventually get one, but they should also probably be prepared to get it weeks after the initial June 5th launch.
It’s rare for a company to publicly acknowledge problems like this unless they’re really bad. Pre-orders are set to begin in the United States tomorrow at the same $449.99 price point after a slight delay to assess the impact of tariffs, and if you have a chance to secure a console, you should probably take it. Demand vastly outpacing supply is something we’ve seen all too often over the past few years, especially when it comes to graphics cards. And while it has never gotten as bad as it has back in 2020/2021 during the great silicon shortage, we can still think of a lot of recent launches where we’ve had to wait months, and endure lots of nonsense (and scalpers), before we’ve had “regular” supply good enough for you to be able to buy something and have it delivered within the same week.
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I’m not saying there will be a massive, months-long shortage of Nintendo Switch 2 consoles. But it is a console that’s turning out to have more demand than Nintendo initially anticipated, and it looks like a product Nintendo is having trouble ramping up production on. In other words, if you don’t manage to secure your console tomorrow, you probably won’t be able to go into a store on June 5th and grab a console. It might be scarce for weeks or months following the launch, and scalpers can, and will, step in and eat everyone’s lunch by buying consoles and reselling them for insane markups.
If you weren’t planning on getting one on launch day, you can probably disregard this message. But if you want to play Mario Kart World before everyone else does, and you get even the slimmest of windows to buy one tomorrow or over the next few days, you might want to pull out your credit card and keep it handy.
Source: Nintendo Japan via The Verge
