The Nintendo Switch has definitely had some mixed reception since Nintendo’s presentation last Thursday that announced the console’s price, release date, and games lineup, but that hasn’t stopped it from selling out all over the place. Following the end of the presentation, most of the main nationwide retailers in the US put up pre-orders online for the console and sold out, so now the question remains, is there anywhere left to pre-order the Nintendo Switch?
Walmart was the first of the main retailers to put their pre-orders up last Thursday night, followed by Best Buy, GameStop, Amazon, and Target in that order. Walmart seemed to sell out in mere minutes, with lots of people getting cancellation emails after, but they put more back up a bit later. Best Buy had them up for awhile as well, but GameStop sold out pretty quickly at first. Amazon and Target were mostly the same as well, though GameStop put them back up for pre-order and they lasted for a few days.
As of the time of this writing, none of the major nationwide US retailers have the Nintendo Switch available for pre-order online. GameStop has since reported that they have sold through their allotment of the system, though some say that this includes open pre-orders allotted to stores that may still be available, but that will depend on your local GameStop. The actual in-store pre-orders started on Friday morning and had stores putting signs up detailing the number of units they would have available for pre-order at opening, which you could pre-order by putting down $50.
The morning after the first pre-orders went up, Walmart also started advertising the ability to go in-store and pre-order the Switch at the in-store pickup counter by putting 10% down, which would be $30. They stated that this would be available for a limited time, but this is still being advertised on their website. However, you will definitely have to check in store to see if that is still the case. Considering the pre-orders are completely gone on the website for now though, you may be out of luck.
At this point, your best bets are to check with your local GameStop or Walmart in-store and see if they are still taking pre-orders for the Nintendo Switch. GameStop has already said that they have contacted Nintendo about trying to get more pre-order allotment, so keep an eye on the website for more to potentially go up. We do not know if the other retailers like Amazon may have more pre-order allotments that they will put up prior to the system’s release, but I’d definitely keep checking.
In addition, Toys R Us is kind of the wild card here as they have not done pre-orders that I am aware of. The website just has a general Nintendo Switch information page right now, so it’s possible they will put pre-orders up online before release, or potentially do them in-store as they’ve offered in the past with consoles.
At this point, we really have no idea if the Nintendo Switch will be hard to find at launch, and if so, for how long. The Wii was near impossible to find for over a year in stores, but the Wii U was everywhere at launch, even though it sold out of initial pre-orders. Our best advice is to keep looking out and hopefully you’ll be able to snag one.
