In Japan alone two million gamers are taking part in Nintendo's pre-order lottery of the Nintendo Switch 2, something that industry analyst Pelham Smithers from Japan-based equity research house Pelham Smithers Associates, believes accounts for a third of the console's overall user base based on the current Switch's audience.
Not too long ago, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa addressed that not every participant in the lottery will be able to actually get the console at launch. This was after 2.2 million people in Japan jumped in, odds are, they weren't expecting this many people to wanna take part in the lottery and haven't produced enough units to account for too much overflow.
“On April 2, we announced the details of the Nintendo Switch 2 and began accepting applications for a lottery sale on the My Nintendo Store. As a result, we received applications from an astonishing 2.2 million people in Japan alone.
However, this far exceeded our prior expectations and greatly surpasses the number of Nintendo Switch 2 units we can deliver from the My Nintendo Store on June 5.”
Nintendo is trying to make this issue happen to as few people as possible by ramping up production of the highly sought after new Nintendo Switch. Also of semi-note, people in the US and Canada, following Nintendo adjusting accessory prices to accomedate tarriff-related issues in North America in general, are also having trouble pre-ordering the console at major retailers. Some even got to the order it only for an email to be sent out stating that the order was canceled.
To be fair, such pre-order woes are far from new, many consoles run into hiccups in supply and demand that are often not fixed until well after the console is out, and considering Nintendo has realized it now, hopefully by the next quarter post-launch, Nintendo will have produced enough units to meet demand.
Of note, they have two versions of the Switch, a cheaper Japan-only model that can only play games in Japanese and a multilingual model, kind of splitting up the development a bit by having to produce two different versions at the same time.
The Nintendo Switch 2 was fully revealed earlier this year with a ton of controversy surrounding its $449.99 price point as well as the variable pricing model they've taken to, leading to Mario Kart World, the next new Mario Kart game, which features exploration of a spawling open world map, costing $80 for its digital edition. If you'd like a "better deal," you could opt, if you can, to get the Mario Kart World bundle, which costs $499.99. If you can wait, though, the console itself should be on store shelves on June 5, though we wouldn't expect being able to buy one in-store for a few months. Upgrade paths are also not a set-in-stone price, either.