Gaming fans can hardly wait to get their hands on the new Nintendo Switch 2 as pre-orders for the device sold out within minutes and triggered massive outages at retail store websites early Thursday. Though the device officially launches June 5, Nintendo welcomed pre-orders in the US and Canada beginning at midnight ET Thursday, following a delay of several weeks, used to assess the impacts of tariffs on imports from Japan. The prices of a few accessories climbed, but the console remains priced at $449.99, or $499.99 when bundled with Mario Kart World, per Wired. And folks are evidently eager for the first revamped Switch since the device first launched in 2017. Target, Best Buy, and Walmart all experienced website issues as the pre-order got underway.
More than 2,000 customers reported having trouble accessing Target's website for the first 45 minutes, per the New York Post. Best Buy, which only granted pre-orders to registered accounts, received more than 600 reports of outages, extending from about 9pm Wednesday to 2am Thursday, many associated with failed log-ins. Some customers who were taken to the website reported seeing a "coming soon" prompt for 30 minutes after the pre-sale went live, per IGN. All three retailers sold out of pre-orders within minutes, though some were left waiting in digital queues for more than an hour and others had orders canceled soon after they were completed. But the eager are not out of luck yet. GameStop's pre-order begins at 11am ET. (More Nintendo Switch stories.)
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