Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Nintendo Switch price gouging is rampant on Amazon

By Maya Shwayder March 30, 2020

While Nintendo Switches may not be medically essential items during the coronavirus pandemic, they certainly are a choice way to keep people occupied as they wait out the disease cooped up in their homes — and price gougers have noticed.

Opportunistic sellers on Amazon have jacked up prices for Nintendo’s hit console by more than 52 percent since March 13, when shutdowns over the coronavirus pandemic began to hit the U.S., according to data-gathering site Thinknum.

The average price now on Amazon — one of the few places left on the internet where a stuck-at-home person can still buy a Switch — is now $452, far exceeding Nintendo’s $299 retail price. Several retailers even list the gaming device for $482 or more, according to the data.

“Amazon’s third-party marketplace allows people to do this,” Thinknum editor-in-chief Joshua Fruhlinger told Digital Trends.

The price gouging wasn’t limited to just one-off anonymous sellers who were listing the Switch and opportunistically jacking up the price, he added. Some of the predatory sellers had thousands of reviews or were listed as “Amazon bestsellers” or even Prime vendors.

The Switch is currently sold on out Nintendo’s official site, as well as other common electronics and game retailers like Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and Gamestop.

Prices have held steady at $299 at these retailers, but they lack any supply. Listings on eBay appeared to average even higher, with many devices selling for $500 or more.

Amazon has seen a similar kind of price gouging before — though not to the same degree — when it came to sales of N95 face masks last December and January as coronavirus, officially known as COVID-19, spread. In February, Amazon reportedly shut down over 1 million listings over price hiking in response to coronavirus fears, according to a report from ZDNet.

A spokesperson for Amazon told Digital Trends in an email, “Sellers set their own product prices in our store and we have policies to help ensure sellers are pricing their products competitively. We actively monitor our store and remove offers that violate our policies. We have implemented additional measures to keep prices low and our global teams are working 24/7 to monitor prices in our store.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

I'm a multimedia journalist currently based in New England. I previously worked for DW News/Deutsche Welle as an anchor and…

Gaming

Mother 3 is finally on Nintendo Switch … but only in Japan

Clause standing b y a bench in Mother 3.

Mother 3, the highly requested cult-classic RPG for the Game Boy Advance, is set to appear today on the Nintendo Switch Online service. But there's a catch: It's only available in Japan.

North Americans were first introduced to the Mother series under the name Earthbound on the SNES in 1995. As was common at the time, the game was renamed for the West in an attempt to avoid confusion. In 2006, a third entry was released in Japan for the GBA simply called Mother 3, but it has never had an official translation for Western audiences. Both Mother 2, aka Earthbound, and the original Mother, renamed Earthbound Beginnings, have been added to Nintendo Switch Online, but there has never been any indication that the third game would receive the same treatment.

Gaming

Can you play the Nintendo Switch Lite on a TV?

nintendo new switch lite model fcc joy con drift blue

The Nintendo Switch Lite is the smaller, more affordable sibling of the standard Nintendo Switch. This makes it a great option for frugal shoppers, as it's capable of playing all the same games yet carries a much friendlier price tag. However, the Switch Lite doesn't share all the same features as the standard Switch. A big difference is that it won't fit in a traditional Switch dock. That means you'll need to pick up a third-party model if you want somewhere to store and charge your handheld while it's not in use.

But can you play the Nintendo Switch Lite on a TV while it's docked? And is it possible to play Switch Lite on a TV using an HDMI cable or other workaround? Here's everything you need to know about the device.
Can you play the Nintendo Switch Lite on a TV?

Gaming

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is getting a miracle Switch port this summer

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown Deluxe Edition running on Nintendo Switch.

Over the years, a lot of impressive native Nintendo Switch ports have happened. Games like Doom, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Alien: Isolation all seem like they shouldn't run that well on the console, but do. With the hybrid console's more powerful successor on the horizon, only a few of these kinds of ports are probably left. Today, we learned that one of those will be Bandai Namco Entertainment's Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, which will come to the system on July 11.

First released for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2019, this exhilarating combat flight sim is coming to Nintendo Switch as Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown Deluxe Edition. There currently aren't many flight sims like this on Nintendo Switch, likely due to how graphically intensive the game's full 360-degree aerial battles can get. As such, it'll be quite impressive if Bandai Namco Entertainment manages to get Ace Combat 7 up and running smoothly on the Switch, which isn't as powerful as the consoles the game initially released for.