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So how bad is the Switch stock situation?

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S

Seik

Banned
Futureman said:
Yep I'd gladly put down a $300 non refundable deposit. I guess these stores figure they'll sell the systems no matter what so why bother? I have a Best Buy elite gold membership or whatever it's called... would be nice perk for them to hold one for me!
Click to expand...

Well if anything it would do some positive word of mouth from my end and I'd go there again if I ever had to face a similar context.

But all retailers in Canada don't take any names. :(
 
M

Marty Chinn

Member
zackmorris said:
I'm still going to disagree. You could find a PS2 pretty easily within the first year. Same with an Xbox 360. The PS2 sold more than the Wii and the 360 wasn't far off. You could find a PS4 pretty easily after a few months despite it selling incredibly well.
Click to expand...

You're not remembering history accurately though.

ps2-wii-hw-trends.png


Look how demand for the Wii continues to grow after year one where as the PS2 tapers off.
 
F

Faiz

Member
Heard some GameStops were gettting some in today. Many in town were showing as stocked on istocknow, except the one closest to my house, which wasnt showing anything yet. I was only home today to take care of my sick kid, but when I had to run an errand for supplies and medicine I took a moment to stop at the closest GameStop and check.

Yeah, they got them, already sold them.

Also turns out that both gamestops and Walmarts in the town I work in an hour away restocked today, and would have had the freedom to go on a moments notice because it's the normal day I would have driven in the carpool.

These near misses are getting really frustrating.

Oh well, looks like I've missed out on this round of restocks. Maybe next round will be Neons which is what I really wanted anyway. From what I've seen this one was all greys which I would have taken anyway, but still.
 
L

Laekon

Member
Just got back from a Target in Ventura county and they had 4 units in stock. There is another Target, GameStop, Best Buy, and Walmart just a few miles away that probably also have stock. This is nothing like the Wii launch when all the Targets around never had stock on the floor for months.


It was hard not to buy one but I can't get myself to buy a system for 1 game no matter how good it is supposed to be.
 
B

Beduin

Neo Member
zackmorris said:
What...? Like what Nintendo stuff have you been buying?

The NES classic still isn't easily available after how many months now?
The Wii was a horror show to find for well over a year
The Wii U GameCube controller and adapter were both impossible to get at launch and for a while after.
How about amiibos? Those were super to easy find right?

This is just recent Nintendo launches. But this goes back to having to get rain checks for N64 games and accessories from toys r us, and probably was happening before that.

Saying Nintendo doesn't have a track record for this kind of thing is laughable.
Click to expand...


Sweet tapdancing Jesus...
Have you ever worked in production of any kind? Then you should know that there i no such thing as increasing production over night.
For example : you want to produce more switches, then you need to produce more plastic parts. You need moulds, so that is 8-12 weeks at best. And since no factory worth its name has machines standing empty , waiting for Nintendo to call, you either wait until the factory/ies has production time to sell or you invest in a machine. That is 3 months if the machine is anything customized.
So at the three month mark you have produced 0 extra parts for switches.
You have to do a Production Part Approval Process , so that is another week.
All this is for increasing the production of just the plastic parts.
Now i imagine that Nintendo is faster than this, but anything close to 1 month is amazing.

How do i know this? I manage a plant that is producing plastic parts.

And for the "open more factories" crowd : call any quality machine producer for injection molding and say you want 6-8 Big customized machines "fast" and watch as their fast is in a diffrent dimension than your.

And i bet that noone that uses the artificial scarcity argument has ever worked in a sales position. Demand is there now, maybe not next week or month, so any product that is not on shelves right now is a potentially lost sale.
Nintendo did not run a successful company for more than 100 years by gambling.
 
G

Glix

Member
There should be a site that takes full payment at time of reservation and ships whenever they come in. Set some reasonable date like Aug 1st or something as the latest they may come.

It's what I did with my HRAP EX before good XBOX 360 arcade sticks were easy to get in the USA.

Crayon said:
How about this fucking pro controller. Holy shit it's nowhere.
Click to expand...

So crazy that its not on Amazon its been consistently available on Amazon Prime Now in New York City since a few days after launch. Not like, "it pops up sometimes" but it is ALWAYS there and available.

They also had a bajillion at Nintendo World. It seems like the made a ton of them.
 
M

milw00kiee

Neo Member
saw several hanging at the GameStop by me in Milwaukee but I guess I didn't check to see if the boxes were empty.

EDIT: pro controllers. a couple Fridays ago.
 
D

Dark_3nergy

Member
Beduin said:
Sweet tapdancing Jesus...
Have you ever worked in production of any kind? Then you should know that there i no such thing as increasing production over night.
For example : you want to produce more switches, then you need to produce more plastic parts. You need moulds, so that is 8-12 weeks at best. And since no factory worth its name has machines standing empty , waiting for Nintendo to call, you either wait until the factory/ies has production time to sell or you invest in a machine. That is 3 months if the machine is anything customized.
So at the three month mark you have produced 0 extra parts for switches.
You have to do a Production Part Approval Process , so that is another week.
All this is for increasing the production of just the plastic parts.
Now i imagine that Nintendo is faster than this, but anything close to 1 month is amazing.

How do i know this? I manage a plant that is producing plastic parts.

And for the "open more factories" crowd : call any quality machine producer for injection molding and say you want 6-8 Big customized machines "fast" and watch as their fast is in a diffrent dimension than your.

And i bet that noone that uses the artificial scarcity argument has ever worked in a sales position. Demand is there now, maybe not next week or month, so any product that is not on shelves right now is a potentially lost sale.
Nintendo did not run a successful company for more than 100 years by gambling.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I knew parts took time, but the onion layers you seem to be peeling through here are much more deeper then I originally had imagined. I have to wonder, how many factories out there can produce parts for this console? Or are capable to?
 
U

uberTerminus

Neo Member
I talked to a Gamestop employee recently and he told me that they were not expecting stock in until next month. Hopefully Nintendo does not pull another NES mini situation where there were a total of three units per store, regardless of size.
 
D

Dekutulla

Member
Man, I can never tell whether people are talking about the Switch or the Pro in this thread.

Wish I had known there was a restock yesterday, completely passed me by. I guess I'll call the places in my area but I don't see myself having much luck :\
 
H

Hcoregamer00

The 'H' stands for hentai.
Looks like my neck of the woods in Cali had a pretty big restock today and was sold out really fast.

If it keeps on selling out like this, Nintendo might have a genuine huge hit. Imagine what happens once the flood of titles start coming out in Summer and Fall @___@
 
M

milw00kiee

Neo Member
uberTerminus said:
I talked to a Gamestop employee recently and he told me that they were not expecting stock in until next month. Hopefully Nintendo does not pull another NES mini situation where there were a total of three units per store, regardless of size.
Click to expand...

I've been lurking the Gamestop subreddit where the employees and managers post and I have gotten the impression that:

a) not every Gamestop employee knows what they are talking about

b) for this week's particular shipment most Gamestop locations are receiving somewhere between only 5 & 10 units. Possibly even less.
 
R

RoninChaos

Member
kIdMuScLe said:
I don't know...did you expect Nintendo Switch to outsell the Wii U in less than a year? Can you tell me another console that's sold about 2-3million consoles in March? This conspiracy shit is retarded. Never had a problem with finding Nintendo stuff
Click to expand...
It's not a conspiracy, this is what Nintendo does. Remember the Wii? Amiibos, the smash bros adapter? The NES classic? The Black Friday 3ds? Fuck, remember super Mario bros. 3? Go read Game Over by David Sheff. It's laid out there. This is nintendo's MO. It's not a conspiracy theory. They've always under shipped because it creates more demand and causes people to snap up consoles and games when they find them because the item is scarce. It also insulates them because they're under shipping rather than overshipping.
 
J

Jaded Alyx

Member
RoninChaos said:
It's not a conspiracy, this is what Nintendo does. Remember the Wii? Amiibos, the smash bros adapter, fuck remember super Mario bros. 3? Go read Game Over by David Sheff. This is nintendo's MO. It's not a conspiracy theory. They've always under shipped because it creates more demand and causes people to snap up consoles and games when they find them because the item is scarce.
Click to expand...

For the billionth time, you cannot use the Wii in such an example.

As I posted earlier:

This is silly.

The Wii sold more units than any other console month after month. Do you not realise what that means? There were more Wii consoles available for purchase than any other console in history.

The amount of consoles Nintendo supplied to retail was literally unprecedented.
Click to expand...
 
B

Bo Knows GAF

Member
My console from Germany says it's out for delivery today. I'm so ready to go home and play Zelda. I keep checking my email for a delivery notification
 
T

Triz

Member
I was just at Best Buy in Roseville CA and they put 5 on the floor. Looks like west coast got some stock today.
 
S

Skittzo0413

Member
Jaded Alyx said:
For the billionth time, you cannot use the Wii in such an example.

As I posted earlier:
Click to expand...

You know what's funny? That number probably isn't really that far off judging by this thread.

I really don't get how people can continue to believe the Wii was intentionally supply constrained. The mental gymnastics it takes to get there is unbelievable. "Sure, they were shipping and selling more units faster than anyone ever has in this industry, but they still should've known!!!"

Yeesh
 
B

Beduin

Neo Member
Dark_3nergy said:
Interesting. I knew parts took time, but the onion layers you seem to be peeling through here are much more deeper then I originally had imagined. I have to wonder, how many factories out there can produce parts for this console? Or are capable to?
Click to expand...

Oh, many factories can produce this but that is not the problem. Nintendo need a factory with a machine standing still ready to start production, so the number shrinks to very few. Among those left , a few of them is bound to take advantage of the situation Nintendo is in and set the price according to that. One must also take into account that you do not want to spread out production on too many manufacturers. Ideally you want atleast 2 , to prevent any malfunctioning machines, but too many will leave you open to inconsistent quality across manufacturers.

The dream would be maybe four diffrent factories but still the same company, with machines that are running constantly.
 
V

Veitsev

Member
Laekon said:
Just got back from a Target in Ventura county and they had 4 units in stock. There is another Target, GameStop, Best Buy, and Walmart just a few miles away that probably also have stock. This is nothing like the Wii launch when all the Targets around never had stock on the floor for months.


It was hard not to buy one but I can't get myself to buy a system for 1 game no matter how good it is supposed to be.
Click to expand...

Actually plenty of stores had stock on the floor near the Wii launch. I worked at a Target and we would put out units all the time. They just didn't last more than a few hours.
 
J

Jaded Alyx

Member
Skittzo0413 said:
You know what's funny? That number probably isn't really that far off judging by this thread.

I really don't get how people can continue to believe the Wii was intentionally supply constrained. The mental gymnastics it takes to get there is unbelievable. "Sure, they were shipping and selling more units faster than anyone ever has in this industry, but they still should've known!!!"

Yeesh
Click to expand...

It's such a lazy 'argument'.
 
M

mochicat~

Member
my brother was able to find a switch for himself and me at two different bestbuys since its one per household. pretty amazing. happy hunting everyone
 
N

niunhuiio

Member
Lots of GameStops in the Midwest showing Gray restocks (iStockNow)
First west coast, today midwest, east coast restock soon probably
 
H

Hcoregamer00

The 'H' stands for hentai.
Jaded Alyx said:
It's such a lazy 'argument'.
Click to expand...

I agree.

The argument about Nintendo intentionally holding back supply ignores the reality of production lines and the gargantuan costs (in both time and money) to increase production, and the huge cost (in money) for dealing with oversupply of the supply chain. Nintendo recently increased production because they probably had internal metrics determine that supply increases outweigh the costs of increasing production.

People tend to forget, Wii U never went down in price because they overproduced and sat on units for many many years. Being smart in production means that Switches can gain efficiencies in production, motherboard changes, and chip shrinkages which translates to large cost cutting and cheaper consoles.
 
C

Colonel Mustard

Banned
Beduin said:
Sweet tapdancing Jesus...
Have you ever worked in production of any kind? Then you should know that there i no such thing as increasing production over night.
For example : you want to produce more switches, then you need to produce more plastic parts. You need moulds, so that is 8-12 weeks at best. And since no factory worth its name has machines standing empty , waiting for Nintendo to call, you either wait until the factory/ies has production time to sell or you invest in a machine. That is 3 months if the machine is anything customized.
So at the three month mark you have produced 0 extra parts for switches.
You have to do a Production Part Approval Process , so that is another week.
All this is for increasing the production of just the plastic parts.
Now i imagine that Nintendo is faster than this, but anything close to 1 month is amazing.

How do i know this? I manage a plant that is producing plastic parts.

And for the "open more factories" crowd : call any quality machine producer for injection molding and say you want 6-8 Big customized machines "fast" and watch as their fast is in a diffrent dimension than your.

And i bet that noone that uses the artificial scarcity argument has ever worked in a sales position. Demand is there now, maybe not next week or month, so any product that is not on shelves right now is a potentially lost sale.
Nintendo did not run a successful company for more than 100 years by gambling.
Click to expand...

Pretty much this. And this doesn't even take in to account time for turnaround to add additional lines to the process if Foxcon is even able accommodate the additional flow.

It can take us over a month to make minute changes to a particular process with all the shit involved.
 
T

TS-08

Member
Veitsev said:
Actually plenty of stores had stock on the floor near the Wii launch. I worked at a Target and we would put out units all the time. They just didn't last more than a few hours.
Click to expand...

To add to this, because I also worked at a retail store during the Wii launch, we pretty much always held shipments and put them out for sale on Sunday. So even if they weren't advertised, people figured out that that was when they would be in stock if we had them and would come in or call around open to check. I imagine if we put out shipments on a random Tuesday, unannounced, the Wiis would not have sold out for a bit before word got out.
 
G

Glass Shark

Banned
It has never been proven that Nintendo or any other consumer electronics company purposely limits supply in order to create artificial scarcity and drive up demand. Anyone who makes that claim should be bringing the receipts.

This thread has become a place for people to share information about how and where to get a Switch, and anyone wandering in making those statements is just derailing the conversation and not helping anyone. Cut it out.

P.S. Switches in stock today at 3 PM at Nintendo NYC. While supplies last, obviously. You have 15 minutes to get there, and it's probably already too late, but I thought I'd throw it in here!
 
B

Beduin

Neo Member
Colonel Mustard said:
Pretty much this. And this doesn't even take in to account time for turnaround to add additional lines to the process if Foxcon is even able accommodate the additional flow.

It can take us over a month to make minute changes to a particular process with all the shit involved.
Click to expand...

Sometimes i think that certain people on this board thinks Nintendo themselves actually manufacture the stuff.
When the truth is that they are probably dealing with alot of suppliers. And those suppliers in turn have their suppliers and on it goes. I guess foxcon can alleviate this by being proxy for alot of the suppliers.

And people bring up the scarcity of amiibos as if it was artificial. They have no idea how advanced those molds are.
A handful mouldmakers in the world ,MAYBE, would be able to do those molds at that quality and size. We are talking engineering and metalworking that should be classified as art.

The major point is that there is only 24 hours per day no mattor what you are trying to speed up.
 
B

Beduin

Neo Member
jrh2 said:
It has never been proven that Nintendo or any other consumer electronics company purposely limits supply in order to create artificial scarcity and drive up demand. Anyone who makes that claim should be bringing the receipts.

This thread has become a place for people to share information about how and where to get a Switch, and anyone wandering in making those statements is just derailing the conversation and not helping anyone. Cut it out.

P.S. Switches in stock today at 3 PM at Nintendo NYC. While supplies last, obviously. You have 15 minutes to get there, and it's probably already too late, but I thought I'd throw it in here!
Click to expand...

I am sorry, unintentional derail. But blood boiling and all that. Will keep it in the right topics.
Carry on and I hope all that wants one , gets one
 
A

Altered Juice

Member
Local Walmart restocked (Norwalk, CT near the KFC), someone mentioned purchasing one and the number on brickseek went down.

Might have to see if they have neon available.

3G3YX2Z.png

O70MJr.gif
 
F

Futureman

Member
BONDO said:
My gamestop got a few in.....they decided to bundle them for stupid prices :|
Click to expand...

that's bullllcrap. Where are you located?

iStock is showing a surge of midwest Gamestops with stock. Might just check Gamestop here to be sure (Pittsburgh). Gonna check a Target tonight at 8 PM after a job.

If you turn on the iStock filter and only show red/blue consoles, all of the Gamestops disappear :(

It's really feeling like if I come across one soon it's going to be gray.
 
U

ultron87

Member
To continue to corroborate the Midwest restock talk, at least one Gamestop here in Cincinnati had stock today, but they're sold out already.

I'll check some more far out ones after work.
 
C

commish

Jason Kidd murdered my dog in cold blood!
Altered Juice said:
Local Walmart restocked (Norwalk, CT near the KFC), someone mentioned purchasing one and the number on brickseek went down.

Might have to see if they have neon available.

3G3YX2Z.png
Click to expand...

Wow I *Just* left the NY World store, picking up my pro controller. If I had known, I would have picked one up for someone here.
 
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