Absence only makes the heart grow fonder. If that idiom holds true, it means bad tidings for Americans looking to get their hands on the Switch 2. U.S. and Canada-based Nintendo fans will be some of the last in the world to have the opportunity to preorder the Nintendo Switch 2 at 12:00 a.m. ET on Thursday, April 24. If you want an inkling of how hectic events will be this week, take a gander at the hysteria of worldwide Switch 2 preorders. Nintendo itself indicated that even preorders through the My Nintendo Store’s anti-scalper “priority” console lottery may not guarantee you a first crack at the new handheld at launch June 5.
Though some people online complained relentlessly about the $450 price tag of the Switch 2, Nintendo is already apologizing to people in Japan who may not get a Switch on release day. In a post to X (read via machine translation), Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said it received “an extremely large number of applications” in Japan alone for its lottery sale of the Switch 2. Approximately 2.2 million people in the country signed up, which “far exceeds the number of Nintendo Switch 2 consoles that can be delivered from the My Nintendo Store on [release day] June 5.”
Furukawa says:
Just Japan My Nintendo Store received 2.2 million applications for the lottery sale
Those who didn’t get picked will be auto carried to the next lottery sale.
Even with the second lottery sale they won’t be able to accommodate every applied person!
This is hype! https://t.co/jszUwkFtAh pic.twitter.com/SmUkmpBBid— Switch 2 Stock (fan account) (@Switch2Stock) April 23, 2025
There will be a second drawing for Switch 2 preorder ticket in the country, but even then Furukawa wrote “we cannot fulfill all of the applications we received.” The company is bumping up production for Japan. “We plan to continue producing and shipping a considerable number of Nintendo Switch 2 units in the future,” the Nintendo president said. Nintendo’s priority picks for Switch 2 buyers in the U.S. will be sent out on and after May 8.
At least Nintendo is being up front about stock plans, though it may not aid folks overseas. In other countries where Switch 2 preorders already went live, the demand for the new handheld was “completely crazy.” That quote comes courtesy of Charlotte Massicault, the head of gaming at French retailer Fnac. Massicault told Frandroid (read via machine translation) that the first weekend of preorders reached “historic levels.” The retailer claimed it opened up preorders on April 2, the same day Nintendo fully unveiled the Switch 2.
The French retailer seemed relatively confident Nintendo would avoid a shortage in the country. As with any product release as big as the Switch 2, demand will be different depending on the region. In countries like the UK, where Switch 2 preorders went live April 7, stocks are completely sold out on Amazon (which does not seem to have a U.S.-based page for Switch 2) and retailers like EEStore and Argos. That doesn’t mean the U.S. will meet the same fate, though it’s a factor of whether Nintendo had enough foresight to guess demand for different regions.
Back during the original Switch launch, Nintendo sold around 360,000 units in Japan during the first month of release. Today’s figures indicate the legacy console maker is seeing many times more demand than its first handheld, but it’s not an apples to apples comparison. Nintendo lists “The Americas” as its biggest region for sales, of which the U.S. is the lion’s share of customers eager to snap up whatever the Mario maker provides. The Americas counted for 54.5 million original Switch sales compared to 34 million in Japan, according to Nintendo’s latest sales data. The company does not provide data broken out by country, though the entire European region made up 36 million unit sales over the Switch’s lifetime.
Industry analysts have near-universally claimed the Switch 2 will be a big launch. Analysts who spoke to Gizmodo previously said Nintendo had put in more effort than most companies to generate enough stock of console units for launch on June 5. Other industry insiders claimed Nintendo may have shipped around 137,000 units to the U.S. earlier in the year, before Trump tariffs messed with worldwide supply chains and shunted the Switch 2 preorder date. Still, that’s a small number compared to how many handhelds Nintendo could sell in June alone.
In Nintendo’s last financial earnings report, Furukawa indicated his company had learned from its mistakes with the original Switch’s launch stock woes. He further claimed Nintendo was working to meet “as large a demand as possible” for the Switch 2. He also hedged, saying “we believe it will not be easy to rapidly increase production capacity, so based on our prior experience, we are making preparations to be able to respond as quickly as possible.”
U.S.-based preorders go live at midnight, 12 a.m. ET for Walmart, Best Buy, and Target. GameStop, with its too-good-to-be-true trade-in policy, will start selling Nintendo’s handheld at 11 a.m. ET. If your heart is set on getting a console on release date, you may need to stay up late just to make sure you get your place in line. Or, better yet, avoid the hubbub and buy one when it’s back in stock, though that could be awhile.
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