I was glad to see the amount of posts showing walk in stock seemingly widely available across North America (and Europe?).
This is how you beat the online bot scalpers. I hope Sony and msoft take note as well!
That being said I live in Korea. Here and as far as I know Japan have no units in stock in physical stores. You have to try to sign up for online lotteries or online store preorders. They sold out here in seconds.
Ps5 situation all over again. I would really like to know what Nintendo's mindset was with this one. They nailed it with the US launch and have been praised from media and consumers alike. Over here…not so much.
To all who got their launch system, enjoy! Hope to join you…soon (surely within a few months haha)
Cheers!
by DivineSire
35 Comments
It may just be a matter of the product being more popular in Asia. Nintendo confirmed weeks ago that the demand in Japan greatly surpassed their expectations.
The store cloer to me had, according to them, around 8 non-reserve consiles send. Which they considered pretty good amount. Around 13:00 there was only one of those left, from ehat I heard.
No issue here in Hong Kong. I signed up for the lottery (and got it), but I was also able to reserve a system at a local shop so I gave up the lottery purchase. Seems like many major retailers and game stores have enough stock that there isn’t a shortage. Went to pick up my Switch 2 yesterday and a few people didn’t have one reserved and were still able to purchase one. Not sure if this is a case of Nintendo HK doing well, if the Switch 2 is lacking demand here (doesn’t seem so to me), or a mixture of both.
Lottery system is the standard. Im in Japan and got my from the Nintendo lottery
There are no shortages In the Nordic countries, but the Swtich 2 is 700usd in retail so that is pretty much the explanation. 🙁
Way too high demand, and I don’t think they are in a hurry to saturate japan or korea, the 2 reigions where the switch 2 is cheapest with exchange rates to account for.
for japan specifically though demand is just through the roof, they can potentially just blow past ps5 LT sales in realese month if they had that many.
as for korea, either blame daewon, or just korea being not a strong market for consoles traditionally. personally I’m waiting for it to come in stock in costco, as a fellow korean, since its usually 10% cheaper there. (both the switch 1 and OLED are ATM)
Turns out my day one Switch 2 title ended up being No Man’s Sky. Years of free updates, not a single paid DLC, it’s a Switch 1 title with free Switch 2 upgrade. It’s currently on sale until the 17th.
I’ve held off too long on this game.
Most online retailers with in-store pickup options disabled that for the first day. Target showed stores near me that had available systems, but I couldn’t place an order online. I had to go into the store to get one. But now that a day has passed, everyone else is able to place online orders. It may not prevent scalpers entirely, but I sure hope it helped.
Germany is out of stock 🙁
Also, except major cities in the US apparently.
Applied for the lottery in Japan for the multi-language unit and I’ve lost three times so far. I wouldn’t mind hunting down units at far away/less busy stores, but their grand plan to stop scalpers with the yen being weak means multi-language is only available online. I can navigate the system in Japanese just fine but I’d just prefer to game in English and a fair amount of games decide the language based on the system’s language, so it’s lottery for me over and over until I either give up, import, or win.
Living in Korea too. They’re all over 중고나라 and 당근. ㅠㅠ
Just want to give creds to the “Joy Con” sub-title
The best way to truly beat a scalper is to not give them money at all.
I mean if you look at the market Asia doesn’t buy that many units in comparison to NA or EU. So it made sense on paper to make sure their biggest markets were well stocked.
I think they underestimated how popular it was going to be in Asia tho. Either that or they did an analysis and decided it was better to have stock shortages in Asia instead of NA and EU. Either way it sucks.
Japan is sold out everywhere but one good thing, no one seems to be buying the on the reseller sites
I live in a pretty rough area, its not big enough to stock massive amounts, but its sandwiched between 2 cities so my local stores all sold out. So things arent perfect, but im glad as a whole scalpers are getting burned
I live in Hong Kong and did not preorder the switch 2. I went to a local computer shopping mall and just picked up a switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle + official Nintendo carry case + glass screen protector for $3750HKD ($470 USD)
Supplies are abundant, there’s still plenty units available here…
**and Central Europe. Estimated delivery early to mid-August.
In my city the scalpers won. I didn’t get a switch 2 yesterday. City sold out by lunch. I wil leait, but I know a few people at least who were messaging scalpers.
Midwest US city.
Why do you assume that just because units are available that it’s due to scalpers?
The vast majority of consoles in every launch have always been sold directly to customers, so if they don’t sell out if it’s because people aren’t buying it
Here in LA that is not the reality scalpers went around everywhere and drained the stock. I saw it dwindle all around me while I was stuck at work lol
Sorry to hear tou are having trouble getting one. I hope you get one soon.
All that launch stock is already gone though. They released a ton of units but they are gone.
Walk into store, but Switch 2. They are all not sold out where I am
I’m in the US and had to go to a different office yesterday. This made it difficult for me to do anything until late afternoon. I stopped in four locations on my way home. None had stock.
I’m in no rush, but I’m sure scalpers are still going to do well.
2 things to remember. 1: getting one through a scalper supports scalping regardless of what you say. 2: video games are not a necessity, you can wait for them to restock.
The way to defeat the scalpers is by not giving them your money. If you give them your money, you are encouraging scalping. There’s literally no other reason.
Yeah, I was planning to buy it offline day 1 but was disappointed when I found out.
GameStop, wal mart and Best Buy near me still have both SKUs
I’m in Korea as well. I managed to get mine through the Nintendo lottery system quite easily. I also put my name on a wait list at the only game store nearby, but there was already over 500 names on the list. Never heard from the store.
Here’s hoping emart and/or homeplus can have systems in stock for you shortly.
Well scalpers only win if losers with fomo buy from them.
Don’t do so and you’re good
I dunno man the major retailer sites are all saying OOS for me (US South). I’m sure it’s not aligning with the stock in store, so people are almost certainly able to get stuff walking in, but I think that’s a significant change from yesterady where every retailer had stock showing.
The major auction and resell sites officially posted they would not allow switch 2 reselling for a while but https://jp.mercari.com/search?keyword=Switch2&srsltid=AfmBOorIEBqcjSXnJIssIDuY-ghXzH5Hei-tTBwm1qbKniVldUQk8C4o
It’s in stock here in Mainland China but price gouged by $100.
I’m still waiting for more stock to come in here. For whatever reason our local Walmart only got around 15 consoles in on launch day, and they have no idea when they will be getting more.