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GameStop: Nintendo Switch Selling Out In Hours, Not Days

This article is more than 6 years old.

GameStop stores across the country may have gotten new shipments of the Nintendo Switch in advance of the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe release, but if you didn't already know that probably missed them. Nintendo's new hybrid living room/portable console started flying off of store shelves on day one, and it shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. It's good news for Nintendo, a company that badly needed a win with its core console business after the tepid response to the Wii U and good news for the Nintendo fans that have managed to get their hands on one of the things.

The biggest problem right now: these things are not easy to obtain. While there have been reports that Nintendo has been expanding production, at this point the machine remains an elusive beast. I talked to Eric Bright, GameStop's Senior Director of Merchandising, who said that the Switch continues to outsell predictions and that anyone hoping to grab one from a physical store is going to have to be quick.

"It's exceeding our expectations," he said. "We knew it would be a high-demand product, but our Switch allocations are selling out not in days, but in hours...the demand is so high that consumers have to react quickly to be able to get their hands on them."

And while specific predictions about future supply or demand are tough to come by, nobody seems to be banking on supply stabilizing any time soon. At this point, demand still seems to be riding a launch window peak where machines are selling out immediately, at least for all intents and purposes.

"Right now we're not seeing sales going down at all, and I would expect that to continue for quite some time," said Bright. 

The release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe marks the Switch's second major title, following The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at launch. The Wii U saw a long content drought after release, something that Nintendo has blamed for the sharp drop-off in sales. Nintendo's trying to avoid that this time around with a steady, if somewhat sparse, release schedule leading into the holiday season. Quality can balance out quantity, if the reviews for both Mario Kart and Zelda are anything to go by.

In the meantime, we'll keep an eye on supply and wait for that moment when a machine stays on store shelves for a full 24 hours.