Switch 2 pre-orders never went live on Amazon in the U.S. – some outlets suggested they likely will, others were much less optimistic. While Amazon stopped carrying most first-party Switch games previously, it would still somehow have stock popping up during major sales, but, while there is still an official Nintendo storefront on Amazon, just about everything on there is sold by third-party sellers at this point. In Canada however, for our friends north of the border, this isn’t entirely the case as pre-order listings for Switch 2 did go live there (to some degree) and invites to purchase one are still being sent out.
As of right now Amazon in Canada still has Nintendo Switch 2 pre-order listings live for both Nintendo Switch 2 and the Nintendo Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundles. They are, however, locked behind Amazon’s invitation system.
While they went up late morning on April 24 – the day pre-orders finally went live in the U.S. and Canada – with these listings still live and the way Amazon’s invitation system works, it is still worth the single click it takes to sign up.
You’ll need a Prime membership, but all you have to do is sign-in and navigate to either of those listings to request an invite. If you are chosen, an email will be sent out to you with a buy link and the process (if you get selected) is actually quite a nice one – no rush, no chance of it selling out while you’re trying to checkout, none of that mess.
We can confirm (because we just got lucky and did it) than an email arrives in your inbox and you get 22 hours to leisurely stroll through the add to cart process and checkout. It was a dream come true compared to the mad dash of the traditional pre-order queue system.
Amazon Canada has also said that your invitation request remains active, so even if you don’t get a chance to score one in the “first round” you might still see a purchase email for future rounds over the next 3 months – you don’t need to keep requesting.
Okay so, sure you might not get chosen. And that completely sucks. But it does beg the question: why don’t all retailers just run pre-orders of this magnitude like this?
Everyone wants to know they secured one at the earliest possible date, but no one wants to go through what can be an excruciatingly frustrating process of getting bumped out of line, or even just waiting in virtual queues with millions of other folks only to finally get through and have it say out of stock – I had three Switch 2 orders look like they went through entirely on pre-order night that were immediately cancelled by the retailers. But surely this process would be much more stable if you just had to hit a single request invitation button right?
Switch 2 game pre-orders:
- Donkey Kong Bananza $69
- Mario Kart World $79
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Switch 2 Edition $79
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WildSwitch 2 Edition $69
- Super Mario Party Jamboree Switch 2 Edition $80
- Kirby and The Forgotten Land Switch 2 Edition $79
- Street Fighter 6 $60
- Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion $70
- Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma $70
- No Sleep For Kaname Date $50
I’m not proposing a lottery here, let’s get that straight. By why not a first come, first served invitation? Retailers mostly have a set amount of stock they can take orders for when the pre-sale begins, and the console begins shipping on the same day for everyone (typically a month or two later). So just let everyone click a single button and then retailers can simply send out emails to account holders that requested an invitation and then they can casually click through and calmly checkout – no site crashing, no staying up in the middle of the night, and much less frustration.
Remember this scenario still presents a first come, first served situation, just one folks with quick trigger fingers can take advantage of without dealing with overloaded webpages and checkout systems.
I’m no expert or anything, but it also seems as though retailers could mitigate scalper issues this way by favoring real user accounts that actually show past activity – I mean most folks have also purchased other things from the retailers they are pre-ordering Switch 2 from and already have a legitimate account (I guess the bots can just fake this, but there is a reason Nintendo implements a system like this after all).
Just a thought.
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