Retail pre-orders for theNintendo Switch 2started going live at midnight EDT on April 24, and many hopeful purchasers are lamenting the experience. All the convenience of online shopping goes right out the window when it comes to something in exceptionally high demand, likepre-ordering the Switch 2, resulting in a wide range of frustrating technical issues.
In the wake of retailers opening the floodgates,community forums like ther/NintendoSwitch2subreddit are awash with people airing their frustrations. UserThe-Zombie-Sasquatchled their post with “What a disaster,” before sharing their poor experience with Target and Walmart’s websites.
Others seemed to have some luck before having a rug pulled out from under them, like Reddit userEndawmyke, who said, “imagine waiting ‘in line’ for an hour and half only to get this,” accompanied by a screenshot of a notice that the Switch 2 had sold out.
Issues continued later into the morning with GameStop’s later pre-order time. Our personal experiences include the GameStop website going down and remaining unresponsive for several minutes, with the Switch 2 appearing as sold out when it came back up.
Nintendo Fans Are Let Down By Target & Best Buy
Unresponsive Sites & Seemingly Phony Queues
Target and Best Buy are catching a lot of flak for how the pre-order process was handled. Target’s pre-orders started on time, but the website was notably unresponsive. The links worked, and you could add a Switch 2 pre-order to your cart, butthe checkout pages often failed to load, loaded indefinitely on both the desktop site and the mobile app, or encountered an error upon trying to pay. Even worse, some consumers completed the checkout process only to have their order canceled after the fact due to a “technical issue.”
Best Buy is being heavily criticized for its queue system, whichtold people they were in line, but had no clear indication of what that actually meant. Many waited for well over an hour in the digital line (after Best Buy’s pre-orders went live well after the advertised time), only to be greeted at the front by a message that the Switch 2 pre-orders had sold out. There’s quite a lot of speculation that Best Buy’s queue wasn’t really a queue, i.e. you didn’t have an exact position in a line and there was no clear pattern as to who was being allowed through first.
Our Take: Retailers Need New Pre-Order Systems, But They’re Unlikely To Change
I Want To Get Off Target’s Wild Ride
The sad fact of the matter is thatpre-orders don’t have to be like this; the chaos is unnecessary and fixable. Nintendo has already demonstrated a solution itself: a lottery to select who gets a pre-order based on existing customers with Nintendo Switch Online accounts. It has unfortunately not been able to meet theSwitch 2 demand in Japan, but it’s at least more organized. If you’re not picked in the lottery, which is happening May 8 in the U.S., then you’re not picked and that’s it – no waiting, constantly refreshing apparently dead websites.
Unfortunately,there’s no incentive for massive retailers like Target, Best Buy, and Walmart to do anything about the problem. Even with theSwitch 2’s controversially high price, the console is selling out everywhere. Retailers are still making the sales, and they don’t care if it’s a real customer or a scalper. Consumers might be angry, but in terms of sales made, everything went great for the retailers. It’s been a frustrating start to theNintendo Switch 2era, but if you’re still looking to grab a pre-order, keep an eye out for restocks, and be sure to register your interest on theMy Nintendo Storefor a shot in the lottery on May 8.
Sources:r/NintendoSwitch2,The-Zombie-Sasquatch/Reddit,Endawmyke/Reddit,Rent-Man/Reddit,My Nintendo Store
Nintendo Switch 2
The Nintendo Switch 2 is the successor to Nintendo Switch, scheduled for release in 2025. Confirmed as backwards compatible, it will play both physical and digital Nintendo Switch games. A full reveal is pencilled in for July 28, 2025.
