If Nintendo Switch sales end up anything like what was reported by Swedish retailer Webhallen, Nintendo has an incredibly popular commodity on its hands, one that could stand up to Sony and Microsoft in the marketplace.
As reported by Nintendo Life, the large retailer has not only exhausted its pre-order allocation, it has received more Switch pre-orders than it did for the PlayStation 4. A Nintendo Life reader translated the Webhallen statement into English:
“It’s still January but 2017 seems to be Nintendo’s year. We have already received more pre-orders for the Nintendo Switch than the PlayStation 4, and it’s still going strong! The first batch to release in March is already fully booked, but we recommend you sign up for the next shipment for the highly wanted gaming console to ensure to get one in the next coming days and weeks after its release.”
Unfortunately, actual numbers were not provided, so the fact that the Switch appears to be outpacing the PlayStation 4 ahead of launch in Sweden might not mean much as we inch closer to the Switch’s launch date.
The basic message, however, that the Switch is currently sold out, mirrors the situation in regions across the globe. In the United States, Switch pre-order limits were met within a day or two after being made available January 13, and currently it’s nearly impossible to pre-order a unit for launch in the states. U.K. pre-order allotments were spoken for within a few days, and in Japan, demand caused websites to crash.
Nintendo has stated that it will ship two million units worldwide throughout March, and expects that this will meet global demand. We don’t know how many of those two millions consoles have already been pre-ordered, though.
If interest in Sweden reflects interest the Nintendo Switch worldwide, the product may be harder to find than Nintendo expects.
