So, as it stands, I'm currently sitting on two Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundles. One is from Target that I'll be shipping out to a friend of mine who currently is traveling and unable to secure one. One is for me from Walmart. I was lucky enough to be able to secure two preorders, and I should be over the moon, right? Well... the problem is I still had to deal with all the other fuckery that everyone else did. It put a strain on my mental health, and I really don't appreciate it. I also feel for the people who've had terrible luck, and may not even be able to secure one before launch. I love when gamers can share this hobby with each other, and EVERYONE should be able to experience the Switch 2 on launch day, which I know is a tall order, but websites just refuse to find a foolproof way of getting as many units into the hands of people who genuinely want one.
The night of April 23rd, just before 10pm MDT, I set my browser tabs up with the four big ones: Target, Best Buy, Walmart, and GameStop. Little did I know, GameStop wouldn't go live until the next morning at 9am MDT, but I'll get back to that. So, when 10 pm rolled over, I began refreshing. Only Walmart was ready to go, but they had a que going. It said my wait time was 10 minutes, and I couldn't believe it. Was it really going to be this easy? Ahh, but I learned not to put all my eggs into one basket, so I continued to refresh Best Buy and Target. Target went live around five minutes later, and the big red preorder button was screaming in my face, and I never clicked on anything so fast in my life! Once I got to the shipping details, that's when I started having problems. I put in my address, placed the order, was brought back to the address field. I did it again, then again, and started panicking. Finally, it went though, and I was praying "Please send me the email confirmation! Please send me the email confirmation!" And a minute later, I got the notification on my phone. Preorder secured!
Now, if it was just me, I'd have called it a night, but I texted my friend who was on the road that I got one, and he asked for me to try to get him one, too. That was already our initial plan, and we were ready to go on the 9th, but... well... tariffs. I said sure, I'm already in line at Walmart, and still waiting on Best Buy to go live. So, I noticed that the que at Walmart was not moving. It said I only had 1 minute left, and nothing happened, but I was too scared to refresh, so I let it ride. Unfortunately, 30-40 minutes later, I never got in as the wait time was stuck at one minute. I just closed the window and chalked up the loss. It was either Best Buy or bust.
Around 10:30, Best Buy finally went live, and I found an MKW bundle, but when I clicked on it, I was put in the que. Ok... Ok... it didn't work at Walmart, but it'll work at Best Buy. I have faith in Best Buy. I got my OG Switch from them. I'll get in. Well, roughly 30 minutes or so, the page refreshed and I was booted from the line. I learned later via Twitter that everyone who was in line got booted. So, I tried again. And waited and waited and waited. About another 30 or so minutes later, the page refreshed to say out of stock.
I learned shortly after GameStop was going live the following morning at 9am MDT, but there's a problem. I start work then. I decided I'm going to try a last ditch effort for my friend and got my phone out ready to go. At just before 9am, the thinkable definitely happened. I knew the website would crash. And it did. Over and over and over again. I tried for about 20 to 30 more minutes until the site was stable enough to start showing it as unavailable. Well my friend... I tried.
Then I woke up this morning, and my chat group was going crazy. One of my friends landed her preorder this morning at Walmart, and another said they're still available, so I opened up the site on my phone, searched for it and saw the blue Add to Cart button and clicked it.... and said it couldn't add to cart. Try again... So I did several times until finally, it went through! I secured one for my friend! I was really happy! But then, I think back through all the bullshit we have to go through to get these preorders, and it was never this bad. And it just pisses me off.
I remember when the first Xbox launched in 2001, I simply walked into the store first thing in the morning and they had piles and piles of them on the floor. You picked up one, picked your accessories and games, and you walked out. No preordering even necessary. Back then, you could go to any Electronics Boutique, GameStop, Toys r Us, whatever, and place a preorder weeks after the announcement of the system. But of course, gaming was a different landscape back then.
Gaming today has become far more popular and the demand for these systems at launch have become just as great. Then, 2020 happened, and it was impossible to go to a store and preorder a system anymore. Everything became online, and that year was the year of the bots and scalpers. Bots and scalpers have been around well before 2020, but considering how the economy has shifted and how during the summer of that year, you couldn't even find a bar of soap, it was feasting season for them. The PS5 and Xbox Series S/X only played right into their hands. Retailers' websites buckled under visitor traffic compounded by automatic refreshing of bots, who more often than not absconded with the very item you just put in your cart. Preordering online was already hard. Now, it was a nightmare.
So, we're back here in 2025. The pandemic is a couple years past us, but the effects are still being felt, one of which is trying to get a new system when the preorders go live. And something needs to change with these big box retailers to fight off these scalpers and bots so the rest of us have a chance. Sony employed a tactic when trying to obtain a 30th Anniversary PS5 was nearly impossible, and that was to reserve the right to purchase based on your play time. Nintendo took a page from their playbook requiring you to show Nintendo that you were with them as a customer for at least a year with an active NSO subscription and a certain amount of gameplay. Only then would you be eligible to even be selected to receive an invitation to preorder a system through Nintendo. It was not the most preferred solution, but a solution nonetheless. Gamers newer to Nintendo Switch would be left in the cold, but it gave their loyal customers a fighting chance.
And I think that's one thing that should be done with the rest of the retailers. Here are a few of my thoughts of things that need to change:
- Email Reservation - Sony and Nintendo have already done this, but this should be done by all retailers. The moment a system becomes available, immediately set aside a certain number of unites available only to those who reserve their reservations via email, and then send emails out with a short window of opportunity to preorder. This could also be applied to people who showed up at the website and failed to preorder one. They could be put on a waiting list and be invited the moment it was restocked.
- Visitor Parking Lots - I'm not a technical person, so I don't know if this is how it works or what, but the que system is a good idea; it just needs help. So, instead of having hundreds of thousands of visitors show up at the website doors funneling them in one que that ends up buckling under the stress, create virtual parking lots. Say, the first 1000 go into Lot A, the next 1000 go into lot B, etc., etc., then when the que starts, the load is only on one lot at a time. It'll take longer to get through, but we're looking for stability over convenience.
- MFA - I don't know if this was done via Best Buy or Walmart, as I didn't get through, but it's time to be proactive and verify human activity, and this means MFA. This will also link their accounts and addresses to one phone number limiting their purchases to just one per person. But again, I'm not tech savvy, so I don't know how easy it is to get a bot around MFA.
- Allow Preorders At Stores Again - It's understandable that this wasn't allowed to happen during the Pandemic, but we're several years removed from it. GameStop was the only one of the big four that had preordering in-person, and I've seen many successful posts from people who only had to show up a few hours early to get theirs. One even showed up in the afternoon and still managed to get one.
- Make Scalping Illegal - Ok, so this is never going to happen, but I never expected Trump to win a second term and completely fuck up our economy, so who knows. In 2020, legislation actually stepped in and stopped thousands of people from scalping such items as toilet paper and baby formula, but those were deemed necessities. As much as we love gaming, it's far from a necessity, but snatching up brand new product before customers can buy them and then selling it back to them should be considered exploitation, and it should be illegal for that purpose alone. Of course, there's the argument that there wouldn't be scalpers if there weren't buyers, but that feels like victim blaming to me, which is why I'm not a fan of the argument. Praying on someone's desperation, whether it's for baby formula or video game consoles, is disgusting unethical behavior and should be outlawed.
