Uh, so, yeah… Nintendo’s head honcho, Shuntaro Furukawa, had to, like, drop an apology bomb during this super formal meeting thing they do — it’s their 85th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. Why, you ask? Because, surprise! The Switch 2 took off like a rocket and they didn’t really see it coming. Smashed the old Switch’s sales numbers by, like, a whole million. Jeez, right? But poor Japan kinda got the short end of the stick with stock, while the U.S. and U.K. were sitting pretty.
Oh! And someone at the meeting actually grilled Furukawa about why everything was such a mess. (Honestly, that feels like such a gutsy move, right?)
“Basically, everyone wants a Switch 2. We didn’t make enough, my bad!” Furukawa confessed. I mean, they even had this lottery system on the My Nintendo Store starting in April because, well, demand was nuts — like 2.2 million people tried their luck. Yup, he said sorry and all.
Crazy thing is, they’ve had, what, four lottery rounds trying to sort this out? Another one’s on the way in July. Even big retail chains jumped on the lottery bandwagon.
And sure, now you can just waltz into a store and maybe snag one. But they’re really ramping up production, doing what they can to get more Switch 2s out there. It’s one of those good problems, you know? Too much hype. But yeah, sorry for dropping the ball.
Here’s the kicker: they kinda prioritized the U.S. and Europe. Makes sense money-wise, I guess, ‘cause they rake in the big bucks there. Japan’s third on the cash list per Statista, so, uh, go figure. And oddly enough, there were reports of janky stuff — like tampered units. Some genius thought stapling receipts to boxes was a good plan, and oops, it punctured screens. Ouch.
Despite all that craziness, the Switch 2 launch was a massive hit — way smoother than Nvidia’s GPUs and the PS5 debacle. Back then, you had folks scalping and marked-up prices all over the place. At least in the U.S. and U.K., you’re good — no drama about snagging one of these bad boys, ’cause like, you just gotta know where to look, and boom, you got it.
Anyway, enough rambles. Keep a tab on Tom’s Hardware for those spicy updates and reviews. Click follow or whatever, I guess?
