Man, so here’s the scoop. Nintendo’s head honcho, Shuntaro Furukawa, did this whole mea culpa during their 85th Annual Shareholder Pow-wow. Guess what—Switch 2’s drop was bananas, demand-wise. We’re talking way more than they thought. Like, blew the original Switch out of the water by nearly a cool million in June. Wild, huh? But yeah, the U.S. and U.K. didn’t get hit with supply chaos like Japan did. That’s where it got intense—someone actually quizzed Furukawa over this shortage mess.
Anyway—no, really—bear with me. They started doing this lottery thing in April on My Nintendo Store. Loads of folks jumped in, like 2.2 million of them, which is nuts. Furukawa’s like, “Yeah, my bad,” in this public apology. Since then? Four lottery rounds rolled out, and yet, peeps are still crossing fingers, hoping against hope to snag one. Round five’s coming in July—fingers crossed? Some stores are sticking to this lottery gig, while others are kinda winging it with actual in-store chaos. But hey, they’re trying to beef up production, so fingers crossed.
Oh! Side note—seems Nintendo really focused on the U.S. and Europe, their moneymaker zones. Makes sense, right? Japan pulls third in sales, so it kind of got the short end. But get this—some units in the U.S. and U.K. had hiccups. Like, store folks stapling receipts to the boxes?? Who does that?
Anyway, despite these hiccups, the Switch 2 release is a blockbuster, unlike the train wrecks we saw with GPUs and the PS5 where everyone screamed scalper. So yeah, if you’re chilling in the States or the U.K., you’re pretty much golden, just gotta know where to look for one. Oh, and follow Tom’s Hardware if you wanna stay in the loop.
