Topic: Why is there a shortage of the original Nintendo switch model and its revised model at the moment?

I don't know if this is the case everywhere but in the UK, there is a shortage of the OG switch model and its revised model. I don't know why this is happening. Any ideas?

People be buyin' 'em!

This gave me a good giggle

Implied shortages suggests demand is higher than it actually might be. It grabs headlines from both national news and gaming news outlets. It's a classic Nintendo ploy to increase interest their platform. "It's selling out everywhere, it must be worth getting!" -Gaming normies
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/wii-shortages-analysts...

I have to agree. People are buying them 😉

Call it a hunch, it was Christmas about two weeks ago. Maybe people bought the system to give on Christmas, similarly, there could be people who may have bought one after Christmas (example, using gift cards towards a new system).

Also, some stores do inventory in January, so they might not re-stock right away. This is just what I know from having a mother who worked retail.

@DannyBoi US too, but to be fair basically everything is at low stock at the moment to avoid paying taxes on unsold stock, at least around here.

@DannyBoi What @Magician said... Stores selling out cnosoles makes news, boslters demand. They also avoid oversupply. I'm not saying in a slanderous way. It's a consistent trend of Nintendo's. Selling out of consoles also says something about how good Nintendo's console & iconic games are.

In recent history, Nintendo's conservative console supply was an issue with the regular New 3DS, with the Switch at launch in 2017, and with the NES & SNES classic mini consoles.

We'll all agree it's not fun when you're the buyer, trying to track down stock. Here in the US we've got a website that tracks what stores have stock & their price. Does anyone in the UK know of a similar site that tracks Switch store stock? I'm just posting the link so you can see what it looks like. Don't get too excited if you see UK support on this site, as of a couple weeks ago, it only tracked the grey joycon Switch stock on Amazon for the UK -no other stores or bundles.

https://www.nowinstock.net/videogaming/consoles/nintendoswitch/

This could be a case of there were more buyers then inventory/stock to be had as well. Every company does artificial stock to make sales look better then they are. But I think in this situation is was the later there are now more buyers wanting Switch units as results of using other Switches and or now see that having a Switch gives them more Flexible gaming time and locations. To say Lite caused this is incorrect as they are built on two different designs and apart from chips used they most likely have a give and take.

@DannyBoi

The answer is poor inventory/stock channel management.
Nintendo uses the same pool of parts (mostly) for the Switch standard and Switch Lite. Nintendo just got the balance wrong and made too many Lites with the parts available and not enough standard Switches.

Eventually this should fix itself as Nintendo hopefully will not mass produce too many more Lites till the number in the channels drops quite a bit. That way the new consoles the make for the time being can be more skewed to the standard Switch.

What you say is correct but your take on it is not so correct. Yes there ithere are some differences between the standard and Lite that need different manufacturing processes like the outer shells. But a lot of the internals are the same. Also as you correctly pointed out "aport from chips" which is a very important factor. There's only so many chips to go around. Nintendo had to decide how many went to standards and how many went to Lites.

Nintendo just got the balance wrong hence the standard shortanges currently. Add in the demand for Lites was not as much as anticipated (still high though). More people wanted standards in the holiday period.

So the answer is more standard and less Lite demand than anticipated and this caused Nintendo to get the stock inventory channel to be a out of skew. They made a few too many Lites and not enough standards for the period.

I have to differ on this opinion. I think Nintendo wanted more Switch Lites to be available than the normal model. The Lite looks so much cooler anyways.

@Atomic77

Are you saying it’s an intentional lack of supply by Nintendo to get more people to buy Lites?

@the8thark yes that is exactly what im saying. Yet I don’t know for sure if it’s true or not.

@Atomic77 The issue with that is... profit margins should theoretically be higher on the standard SKU than the lite, and people with the standard SKU are more likely to purchase more games, thus leading to better revenue over time. Why sabotage that on purpose?

Stock shortages weren't even particularly bad this year, with most territories still having them in stock. You'd only push a lite purchase when the standard is fully out of stock. And that didn't quite happen. So I'd say they were well within margin of error, especially since we know the supply chain itself was constrained so there was a limit to how many Switches could be created in total.

I did not really mean what I said earlier on this topic it was just a hypothetical thought. I chose the Lite over the regular switch because I liked the lite and it looked more durable and was more in my budget at the time and it Was the color i wanted.

I find it also hypocritical we got NIN insider whom are not insiders thinking they know NIN better then NIN. That's just laughable-if so please Identify yourself as a NIN insider.

There was a game developer who said watch out for announcments on January 16th January 30th and February13th. In the UK, the standard Switch is back in stock then(January 30th). Maybe it has something to do with an announcement to revive interest in the standard Switch?

It was the DMC twitter account that posted that message.

Building up hype for DMC 3 on Switch.

What if the new pro model simply replaces the hybrid model we have now. So you cant buy that sku anymore and are forced to buy the new model at the same current price. If it's just a 20% upgrade from a terra x2 maybe they can keep the price the same. Otherwise going into year three people will be expecting a price drop at a certain point.

@sixrings I mean, looking at historical trends, they'll launch the new SKU at a more expensive price, then eventually price drop and cut off the supply of the base model and lower the price of the pro to be the only thing left in stock. It's what they did with the DSi and the New 3DS. And that way they get to say they did the price drop twice, once for each model.