Despite a daunting barrier to entry and the looming promise of $90 games, Nintendo's evident belief that it's too big to fail seems to be bearing fruit. If you've tried to preorder the Switch 2, you might notice that, simply put, you can't. Just as with the original Switch, demand has far outweighed supply, to the point where Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa was forced to take to social media to apologize and announce a plan to step up production.
For those of you who can't read Japanese, a machine-translated version follows:
Hello, this is Furukawa. We have been procuring many materials and proceeding with production in advance so that we can deliver the Nintendo Switch 2 to you. On April 2nd, we announced details about the Nintendo Switch 2 and started accepting applications for the lottery sale on the My Nintendo Store. As a result, we received an extremely large number of applications, approximately 2.2 million people in Japan alone.
However, this number 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. Therefore, unfortunately, we expect that a significant number of customers will not be selected when the winners are announced tomorrow, April 24th. In order to avoid the trouble of those who were not selected in the first lottery sale having to reapply, My Nintendo Store will automatically carry over those who were not selected in the first lottery sale to the second lottery sale. However, even including the quantity for the second lottery sale, we cannot fulfill all of the applications we received.
We deeply apologize for not being able to meet your expectations despite our prior preparations. In response to this demand, we are currently working on further strengthening our production system. In addition, starting tomorrow, April 24th, game retailers and online stores nationwide will begin accepting pre-orders or lottery sales for the Nintendo Switch 2 console (please check the information of each retailer for details). The console will also continue to be sold at the My Nintendo Store after the release date (more details will be announced at a later date). With the cooperation of retailers, we will continue to ship the console and make efforts to get as many Nintendo Switch 2 consoles as possible into your hands. We plan to continue producing and shipping a considerable number of Nintendo Switch 2 units in the future. We apologize for the delay in our ability to meet your expectations, and we appreciate your understanding.
Even with limited preorder windows, multiple lottery sales, and an unprecedented price, millions still lobbied for their chance to get a Switch 2, which made my initial prediction of a potential 3DS-style price drop somewhat… optimistic, in retrospect. Hopefully part of Trump's Machiavellian scheme to elect the ghost of JFK as his Vice President and take down the deep state involves rolling back his tariffs and giving every US citizen a free Switch 2 to play in their med bed, but I'm not holding my breath.
Previously:
• Nintendo reopens Switch 2 preorders with post-tariff price hikes
• Bloodborne successor finally in development as Switch 2 exclusive
• Trump's trade war tantrum just made your Nintendo Switch 2 even more expensive
• Nintendo could drop Switch 2 price
