Amazon gave me a delivery time of 5 to 8 weeks. I couldn't find the Switch online anywhere and they prices were 100 € too high on ebay and co. So I decided to try my luck in stores locally. Three of them just laughed and said "not until April for sure; you won't have any luck."
Well, 4th store had around 10 units for 328 € each.
For Germans on the lookout: try Media Markt early in the morning. It seems they hoarded tons after release but they only pack a few onto the shelves and only re-stock occasionally. I was surprised because I live in a rather big city and it was said they are all sold out. Not sure if I was lucky but it's worth a try!
Found a switch when my gf asked if I called the smaller Walmart 45 minutes away. I just knew they wouldn't since the large Walmart in town i was focusing on hadn't got any since launch. They had one and even held it, put my name on it and kept it locked in an office, which the big Walmart in town would never have done. Been Botw-ing since
^If you have followed Nintendo throughout the years, you know this is how they operate. Amiibo, NES Mini, Limited Edition games and now the Switch. It's a strategy that has paid off pretty well.
It generates interest - look at Amiibo: now that people can easily find them anywhere, nobody seems to be interested in them anymore (and I don't believe Nintendo needed support from business partners to produce plastic toys worth 10 cents a piece). If people register on this forum just to express their frustration for not getting the thing, it means it's working.
Of course none of us has the knowledge to really know the reason behind these shortages - if we had that knowledge, we would be running our own multi-billion dollar company instead of posting on a forum - but it's much more likely this is a conscious strategy by Nintendo rather than a mistake that they keep repeating over and over. Sometimes basic human psychology is much more powerful than Wall Street theories.
Great Gunpei, no wonder the industry is running a train on your generation.
Why would I not post about my hobby just because I am running a successful business? I work with many multi million dollar businesses. I am not a rarity, tons of people who play and talk about videogames do. Videogames have existed for nearly half a century now.
The better question is why do you think that to begin with.
@TNGYM
Spizzamarozzi is correct. Nintendo has been doing this for quite awhile now. What spizzamarozzi is talking about is an economic strategy called "Artificial Scarcity". It's the same strategy that toy manufacturers have been doing for many, many years. Look it up.
Good gravy. Its school time kiddies.
First off, gamers constantly cite this dastardly deed interchangably as artificial demand or artificial scarcity. The problem with that is they are two very different things. As the names themselves suggest, one is about supply, and the other is about demand.. Yes, leading us to the number one simplest basic concept modern gamers just cant understand... Supply and demand.
Supply is how much there is, and demand is how many people want it.
Artificial demand is artificially increasing the demand of something you have a LARGE SUPPLY of, If you dont have a huge supply, its pointless to increase demand, because you dont have anything to sell. As I covered in my first post ypu all somehow responded to witjout reading, this doesmt really apply to the consumer electronic market.... Because it would mean you had some gigantic warehouse somewhere you refusing to sell to retailers despite people trying to get your product and give you money... and spending millions of dollars for storage of a global supply of product. This is a really stupid idea. But go for it guys, show me the secret warehouse where nintendo hides the global supply of switches they are refusing to send out until they build up to your unspecified level of critical demand. Also find the secret manufacturing plants they partnered with, because the ones they announced have well documented production throughput that puts the number of switches shipped... At whats currently been shipped to retailers world wide. So where are the secret production plants and where are the secret storage warehouses for the millions of switches nintendo is hiding? Because the number manufactured by the plants lines up really well with the number shipped. And then you can explain how hiding them when they clearly already have more demand than supply equals more money without illegally price gouging.
In real artificial demand, companies use assets they have a virtually limitless supply of, like shares, and then make it look like those shares are worth more than they, for example they have a seperate entity(s) under their ownership 'buy' a massive quantity of the businesses shares, increasing the appearence of demand, and thus RAISING the cost per share, so they can then flip the shares to the people they fooled and make a profit.
Artificial scarcity, doesnt apply to consumer electronics because of business laws preventing switch knockoffs and price fixing.
Artificial scarcity comes into play when you can manufacture a massive supply of product super fast and super cheap, but it costed billions in r&d to create the process (no, not game consoles, were talking less than a cent a pop). This applies to the drug industry very well. Drugs are super expensive to develop, but super cheap to manufacture once they have been created. In order to recover r&d costs the makers need to charge a premium far higher than manufacturing cost.
They clearly cant do this if everyone and their grandma can manufacture and sell the drug. So drug companies get to enjoy years of artificial scarcity where they are the only business who can manufacture and sell the drugs to retail clients, allowing them to RAISE THE PRICE OF THE PRODUCT, because THEY ARE THE ONLY SOURCE OF SUPPLY. Once the exclusivity of the original patent expires, they no longer get to enjoy articial scarcity any longer, anyone can manufacture the drug and distribute to retailers, which is when you see every rite aid and walgreens with their own version of the drug with a knock off of the name and a label saying 'compare to the active ingredients of buttscratch EX!' for a fraction of the price of the name brand.
So, once again, the main point of this tactic is to be able to raise the price of the product, this time by playing on the supply end. So, is nintendo about to open the floodgates of switch shipment 2 for an extra hundred bucks a pop to retailers? No? Then artificial scarcity aint going to make them a dime.... And this just plain old normal scarcity.
But you know who DOES undrstand supply and demand and DOES utilize demand outstripping supply for every console launch ever? Your friendly neighborhood scalper. But unless you can prove that scalpers send a cut of the massive product they make with their price gouging... Then youre just going to have to admit there is no artificial demand or scarcity goin on.
And yes, anyone who has ever worked with businesses who have a product that they manufacture and sell knows what is going on.
When you want to sell a product you have designed you need to hire a manufacturer to use their manufacturing plants to manufacture your product.
Manufacturers take orders in bulk, they dont do half or quarter orders, so if a manufacturer says they can produce 2 million units over six months for the first run, and your demand projections showthe possibility of 3 million,.
You have to decide whether its best to buy a parallel run from another plant, hoping your demand exceed projections and can move the extra mil into retailers... Or wait for the next run to complete risking lost impulse sales because you are afraid having to pay storage for those extra million units will cost more.
Well, in Italy we kinda have the opposite problem.
Checked a big electronic stores and there were, like, 10 Switches.
Still there, no restock, simply never bought.
On the other hand, games are impossible to find. Just Dance and 1-2-Switch are available in big quantities but my brother had to search for a Zelda copy, and the other two were nowhere to be found.
@Alessandro_P that's because in Italy videogame enthusiasts tend to buy from Amazon or GameStop only. As if buying from them made the purchase more legit. People often forget that Mediaworld, Trony or Euronics exist and carry exactly the same products - sometimes even for cheaper.
I mean, you can go to any Mediaworld in Italy and still find WiiU Limited Edition games that have been long out of stock on Amazon/GameStop.
Top-10 games I played in 2017: The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild (WiiU) - Rogue Legacy (PS3) - Fallout 3 (PS3) - Red Dead Redemption (PS3) - Guns of Boom (MP) - Sky Force Reloaded (MP) - ...
@Alessandro_P that's because in Italy videogame enthusiasts tend to buy from Amazon or GameStop only. As if buying from them made the purchase more legit. People often forget that Mediaworld, Trony or Euronics exist and carry exactly the same products - sometimes even for cheaper.
I mean, you can go to any Mediaworld in Italy and still find WiiU Limited Edition games that have been long out of stock on Amazon/GameStop.
Well, you are right. I got my Starfox Zero limited at a Mediaworld with no preorder, and there was another one in stock.
To balance that, we have the worst online scalpers in the universe.
And a pile of Switches that will stay there, while people are in line at Gamestops waiting for something they can buy 20 meters away or less (that's the situation here).
We are not the smartest people.
@TNGYM Excellent post. Very informative and interesting.
Nintendo might be conservative in its projections but then they've got every reason to be. Yes, as armchair analysts we could have told them they'd obviously be able to sell millions of NES minis but then all of the analysts told them they'd sell tens of millions of Wii U's...
As consumers we're often a bit blind to the true costs of the industry - especially the deals that a company like Nintendo makes with their suppliers, their wholesalers and their logistics chain. Even worse I think few of the journalists in the games media are educated enough to properly understand it or explain it either.
I think we'll see plenty of Switch stock as the year goes on - not because there's a special warehouse with the devices ready but because Nintendo will have good production channels making Switches at a consistent and steady rate just above the rate of demand. Some people will have to wait longer than others but I think by the summer anyone will be able to get one fairly easily.
NES Mini on the other hand? I wouldn't rule out that we'll see more in the future but it could easily be that, whilst moderately profitable, it isn't worth Nintendo's time and marketing efforts. In which case it would be a one-off collectable. So if an SNES mini or Game Boy Classic is announced I'd recommend pre-ordering ASAP.
@TNGYM Don't take this personally but I think you would get a much more positive feedback from the people on here if you didn't act like some kind of Wall Street professor who registered one week ago just to teach us mere mortals how multi-billion dollar companies work. If you are a successful businessman, please act like one.
Again, I stand by my previous statement that none of us can really know what goes on in Nintendo's headquarters - we're just speculating, throwing different theories on the table. We see people trying to convince other people that they know the secrets to every single aspect of Nintendo as a company (from the money they net from console sales to their business/manufactoring strategies) and 100% of the times it's just what it is: people with various degrees of knowledge theorising, but none of them so far has worked with Nintendo, therefore no one has been 100% accurate yet.
The truth of the matter is that no one really cares that much about the business/logistic/marketing issue as to read chinese box-like posts the size of the Daily Mail, even more if they are written with a detestable "hey kiddies, let me teach you something" attitude.
If you want, you can re-write your post(s) in a way that is more streamlined, accessible (bear in mind I'm not a native english speaker) and possibly less patronising. I promise I will read them. Otherwise, I have better ways to spend my time - like going out and getting a Switch, you know?!
Top-10 games I played in 2017: The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild (WiiU) - Rogue Legacy (PS3) - Fallout 3 (PS3) - Red Dead Redemption (PS3) - Guns of Boom (MP) - Sky Force Reloaded (MP) - ...
@spizzamarozzi
Dude, YOU sound like the one riding a high horse. Don't judge the way he delivered the info (which is all in your mind, by the way) - just read the dang info or not. To counter, I don't need to read a mini-diatribe from people like you why you continue to refuse to listen to reason.
@rallydefault I'm talking to the guy in the above post, not to you.
And I'm trying to show some respect to the guy, instead of just saying "TL:DR, you're a lunatic" like you tend to say. Plus you acted all shocked and offended when that other guy called you a fanboy a few days ago and you are now criticising me for finding the above post patronising. You really live in a world of your own.
And just to reiterate, I'm trying not to talk to you. I believe I've made it clear enough that I think you're just a waste of space.
Top-10 games I played in 2017: The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild (WiiU) - Rogue Legacy (PS3) - Fallout 3 (PS3) - Red Dead Redemption (PS3) - Guns of Boom (MP) - Sky Force Reloaded (MP) - ...
@TNGYM Don't take this personally but I think you would get a much more positive feedback from the people on here if you didn't act like some kind of Wall Street professor who registered one week ago just to teach us mere mortals how multi-billion dollar companies work. If you are a successful businessman, please act like one.
Again, I stand by my previous statement that none of us can really know what goes on in Nintendo's headquarters - we're just speculating, throwing different theories on the table. We see people trying to convince other people that they know the secrets to every single aspect of Nintendo as a company (from the money they net from console sales to their business/manufactoring strategies) and 100% of the times it's just what it is: people with various degrees of knowledge theorising, but none of them so far has worked with Nintendo, therefore no one has been 100% accurate yet.
The truth of the matter is that no one really cares that much about the business/logistic/marketing issue as to read chinese box-like posts the size of the Daily Mail, even more if they are written with a detestable "hey kiddies, let me teach you something" attitude.
If you want, you can re-write your post(s) in a way that is more streamlined, accessible (bear in mind I'm not a native english speaker) and possibly less patronising. I promise I will read them. Otherwise, I have better ways to spend my time - like going out and getting a Switch, you know?!
Guy I dont run a restaurant, Im not retail, and the client is NEVER right.
I am already well aware no amount of facts are going to change your mind or even make you take a moment of self reflection or contemplation. Stanfords creepy psychological social experiments have been making that clear repeatedly since the 70's. You are too deep into your own belief systems on this subject.
I left this board a few years ago because you guys were WAY too deep into the corporate worship kool aid. I came back because the worst generations guilding is starting to wear off... Not that it really matters. I mean what kind of logic is that anyways. What on earth does how long a users been posting on a particular message board have to do with what is being said, how does that make any argument more or less valid? Talk about a whopper of a logical fallacy.
The response was to your post, but not necessarily to you.... So I guess you dont need to bother with the tone policing angle. I do see it found its audience, and I got positive feedback. So.... Yeah.
And last i am adressing the last part of your paragraph again even though i already debunked the claim the last time you said it... Because this is just a good tactic that bears repeating because it is useful in such a wide variety of situations We dont need to know what really goes on at Nintendo for this. Because we know what goes on where it really matters.
Nintendo does not manufacture their own consoles or products, Nintendo has no manufacturing plants. So nintendo hires manufacturers whose plants produce the products like consoles or amiibos.
For example when nintendo announced the manufacturers who won their contracts, they stated they could produce 8 million switch units in the first run with the number of lines nintendo had contracted. Much to the ridicule of analysts everywhere.
Now into the 2017 year, nintendo has updated their projections and are doubling their throughput by buying more manufacturing lines for the switch to meet updated demand projections.
(people who get how this whole thing works, feel free to let others know that you arent taking me at my word, most of you are probably googling the relevant phrases to see if anything pops up showing whether or not im full of dookie... Since im already 'the enemy' facts wont mean anything coming from me.)
Somebody should tell nintendo they are doing it wrong. Instead of shipping double the switches to retailers confident in the products demand for double the money, they should be clearly halving the number produced to 4 million so they can get all that sweet sweet manufactered scarcity money that comes from retailers.... Er... Not buying more units and also not paying the more monies per switch because price gouging = lawsuits.... And then profit!
Honestly, Im probably not going to respond after this, at least not on this subject, because you are too deep into your own belief system on the subject. Its highly likely you are just going to repeat the same things over and over as long as i keep responding.
@StuTwo
But they didn't allow preorders for the NES mini.
In the US. NoE, NoA and NCL may release (mostly) the same games and have similar market positioning but they are their own beasts. Perhaps NoA just has very different relationships with their wholesalers than Nintendo in other countries - we have no way of knowing.
Here in the UK I had my pre-order well before release. Just kicking myself that I didn't pre-order through Nintendo directly and buy an extra controller (pre-ordered through Amazon for free delivery foolishly thinking they'd add the extra controllers for purchase at a later time...).
Hey everyone, well what a journey I have been on since posting this.
I have been to countless stores, running around multiple times and could not get my hands on the damn thing.
I went through issues with 2 orders on Amazon being scammers, I was signed into bestbuy on the 29th restock an hour before and was trying to check out for 45 minutes with glitches until I missed out, I had chased restock after restock.
In an anticlimactic ending I was complaining on instocknow and right when I posted my comment there was an announcement that Walmart had a restock.
I checked out on my phone browser and had to input all my payment info and somehow managed to grab a pro controller bundle before other people who were prepared and somehow got glitched out of adding one to their cart.
I am really happy, but my order says undefined by April 6th. The payment was taken out of my account so I assume it is coming.
What a pain in the ass though, I have never had such a hard time buying an item in my entire life and I hope I never do again.
Hey everyone, well what a journey I have been on since posting this.
I have been to countless stores, running around multiple times and could not get my hands on the damn thing.
I went through issues with 2 orders on Amazon being scammers, I was signed into bestbuy on the 29th restock an hour before and was trying to check out for 45 minutes with glitches until I missed out, I had chased restock after restock.
In an anticlimactic ending I was complaining on instocknow and right when I posted my comment there was an announcement that Walmart had a restock.
I checked out on my phone browser and had to input all my payment info and somehow managed to grab a pro controller bundle before other people who were prepared and somehow got glitched out of adding one to their cart.
I am really happy, but my order says undefined by April 6th. The payment was taken out of my account so I assume it is coming.
What a pain in the ass though, I have never had such a hard time buying an item in my entire life and I hope I never do again.
Congrats on finally getting a Switch! You won't be disappointed.
Thanks for the congrats! I hope its worth it! I can't wait to get zelda, im gonna grab a copy tonight at walmart
Nintennerd I highly suggest you use instocknow.com to get stock updates if you want a switch within the next few months.
Simply calling a store is not enough, you eithrr get lied to about stock not being in or told its coming in on a certain day while it sells out in minutes.
Walmart.com has been getting restocks a few times a day since yetserday so you should aim for them.
Good luck! Its getting easier to get one! You just have to be persistently watching
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