 Hey everyone, before I get into this video, I want to remind you to enter our giveaway for Trials of Mana. Now you don't have to get the Switch version, you can get it for any system that happens to be releasing on it. It will be a digital code given away at the end of the month. To enter, all you need to do is like this video, comment down below, subscribe to the channel, and hit that bell icon. Make sure it's set to all notifications for the channel. That way you're notified of every video, every live stream, every podcast that goes up on this channel. That being said, let's get into the video. Hey everyone, do you own a Nintendo Switch and are happily playing Animal Crossing New Horizons, or whatever you want to play during this whole stay at home venture that's happening due to the worldwide pandemic? Well, here's the thing, that's great and all, but right now, if you don't already own a Switch, it's probably pretty hard for you to get one. Especially if you live in the United States and also the UK and even Japan ran out over the last weekend. They've been getting some regular restocks though, but even they're running low on supply. Now, it was anticipated by Nintendo back in February that there would be shortages in April in the US specifically. And people were just kind of dismissing it saying, well, it won't really be that bad. The factories in China will be back up and things will be fine. That isn't really the case. So let's get into this news. It actually comes from Japan. I'm using JapaneseNintendo.com because they do English translations of Japanese Nintendo news. So here's what they had to say. So as you see here, back in February, it said that due to the influence from the current outbreak of novel coronavirus infection, we are now foreseeing an unavoidable delay in production and shipments for Nintendo Switch consoles and peripherals such as Joy-Cons, among others, that are made in China towards Japan's domestic market. Now, that was sort of Japan's domestic market. Obviously, whatever. Here we are in April of 2020. He says, we didn't mention the Switch Lite because there was still enough stock in the market at the time of publication in February. But the point that many of its parts are made in China is the same. We are doing various efforts inside the company. Although shipments haven't stagnated, they are getting delayed. So basically, shipments of Switch and Switch Lite have been delayed pretty much indefinitely at this point. Although there are people who think it'll be going back out by the end of this month. Right now, I have actually heard from very reliable people that there has not been a new shipment of Switches since March 15th. So March 15th was the last time the U.S. got a shipment of Switch Lite and or regular Switches. So that's to give you an idea. There has been no new Switches coming into the U.S. for over two weeks. That explains why we're running out of Switches as well as the release of Animal Crossing. So pretty crazy. Now, if you want further proof that the Switch is hard to get, keep in mind hard to get, not impossible for some of us. Now I'll show you that in a moment here because here's Walmart.com, which is just showing local stuff. And you'll see, you know, an OG Switch selling it at 453. This version, these three colors of the Switch Lite selling at this. Now you'll see that this is the pink version, the coral version, I guess they call it, available for 199. But that's because it's only available for local pickup. So that means that my local Walmart, and not even the one closest to me, it's one in Eau Claire, because there's one one between here and Eau Claire, does have two of these in stock. So if you're lucky, you might be able to find a local place that has one or two. Some of you guys in more rural areas that have, you know, even smaller populations might be able to find, you know, eight or so. But there's no more coming. So once those are sold, they're gone for a while. And you can tell that this is an issue, because even in my area, you can't get these at price, you know, it's been, you know, this has been sold and shipped by worldwide distributors, which means basically people are reselling systems that they bought. And you can see this way true on Amazon, here's Amazon, you know, 521 bucks for the microcard eight bundle, you're seeing 280 for the Switch Lite here. Obviously, this is a special collector's edition, so we can kind of ignore that 451 for just a normal switch 450 280 again 244 254 for these lights. I mean, they are being resold right now by people who happen to own some because they are sold out and eBay's I mean, eBay's an even worse story. You know, obviously, this is the this is the special edition animal crossing bundle. So that being a little pricey isn't too bad. But you see here, you know, $380 for a switch like 375. For what looks like a use switch, it's opened for crying out loud. And it's selling for 375. This one at least includes some games in it, which probably makes it worth the value based on I see Odyssey, Zelda, Pokemon, and Jesus, I can't remember. Hollow Knight, I believe. So that's that that's actually not too bad of a deal there. But then you see 520 here, which is sold 339 of them, like just crazy. So it's just absolutely insane. What's happening with these and it just goes on and on $300 for switch lights and nothing's basically going for at price, you might be able to maybe a couple game stops, maybe have some used ones laying around. I'm not 100% sure on that. But in fact, you know what, let's just go to GameStop and just see if there happens to be used ones laying around here. They do have console bundles. They have animal crossing switch light e shop car bundle here. That's actually more surprisingly more money than than this is worth because you know 289 that's nice. So I guess if you want that bundle for some reason, that's cool. Well, let's actually see what they got here for Nintendo switches online here. It looks like they still have some pre owned. Do they still have this available by online or is it just local pickup at store? Okay. Yeah, you can it's sold out online. You see this items currently not available online. So it's only pick up at store and this is not available in my area. So yeah, they're sold out. It looks like on GameStop as well, at least online, your local store could end up having a couple. Maybe there's some pre or actually curious, is there is there a pre owned pre owned available in my area? There's not even a pre owned available in my area for that. Let's look at one that actually might have one available in my area. Let's look at like the red model here. It's the most popular model in my area sold out online. Not available in my area looks like pre owned, not available in my area either. So yeah, it's sold out. That's just let's just be honest. It's sold out. And as the news says, Nintendo is saying that, Hey, look, shipments are currently delayed. So that's just the way it is. So if you weren't taking this serious, because I know when I made the video, you know, about a month or two ago, people were just kind of saying, This won't be that big of a deal. It's not going to matter. Maybe it'll only be a week. I mean, we're talking shipments not even arriving in the US till the end of April. And then just because the shipments get here, they have to be dispersed. So I mean, maybe even into May before we get anything. Again, the last shipment I've heard from reliable sources landed in the US on March 15. So this is just something that's happening. This is the coronavirus. This is COVID-19, the pandemic affecting our ability to play switch stuff. And Japan has it, you know, as much as they've had these huge sales, they ran out of copies of animal crossing physically. I mean, that's that's like, they're running out of cartridges for it's not even just affecting the switches, they're running out of accessories and cartridges ring fit adventure, they can't make enough of those right now, enough of the rings and like it's, it's crazy pro controllers, they can't make enough of those right now they're sold. It's, it's nuts. And this is just the effect of a pandemic, it is affecting the world of video games, especially for Nintendo, who has a hot selling item, it's not hitting Sony or Microsoft as hard right now because their systems aren't big ticket items right now that everyone's trying to scramble and get the switches not just due to animal crossing but just due to people are stuck at home and they and they want to go and have time to play all these Nintendo games and they're having a hard time getting their hands on stuff. Now, the sales numbers for March are going to be huge because Nintendo already had pre made and pre shipped out a whole bunch of units for the launch of Animal Crossing. So Animal Crossing's launch numbers in terms of the sales of the game in terms of sales of systems are still going to be huge, March's numbers on the MPD are going to be massive. It might even be the biggest numbers switches done in the United States since launch, maybe even bigger than launch if Japan's to go by because Japan was bigger than the launch of the switch. So March's numbers are still going to be huge, but don't make that no don't just sit there and pretend that that makes everything in April. Okay, they haven't been able to ship more units for you know, a couple weeks now, almost three weeks. And we're at a point now where, you know, we're kind of playing the wait and see game, the factories are still making switches, but they're making them at such low volumes that the shipments are being stagnated worldwide. And it's just being very really difficult right now to get units to the UK. They can't even satisfy the Japanese market. And that's where Nintendo is located, let alone trying to satisfy the US market, which obviously a lot of us would love to, you know, get into video games. And the thing is, we shouldn't really be leaving our homes to go buy a switch. That's another crazy thing like it's sold up, but we're not even supposed to be leaving our homes in the first place to go get one. But that's like the only option right now is hoping that somewhere locally has has one laying around that hasn't sold yet. You know, people have been joking on, oh, you need to get your fiance a switch light so you can have your switch drop one, she wants a TV one, so it had to be a regular switch. And two, there's none available in my area anyways, used or otherwise. So I'm kind of crap out of luck dumb, maybe I can go on Facebook marketplace or something like that. And that might be an option for some of you that don't own a switch that want to get one, maybe looking at craigslist and Facebook marketplaces or let go or something, but then you have to meet people and we're not supposed to be meeting with people. So that's a whole nother conundrum. So I don't know. It's crazy. I mean, I'm sure Nintendo, you know, some people talked about someone actually one of my live streams, I kind of want to address this point because I see this brought up numerous times that Nintendo that the shortage right now this sold out switch is a purposeful thing by Nintendo to drive hype and drive sales. And there is a point to having artificial shortages, creating demand. That's not the case here, there hasn't been a shipment to the US since March 15. Let me just beat that in your head since March 15. There hasn't been a shipment in the US. So Nintendo, if they were doing artificial shortages, they would still be shipping units. It just would be less of them. But they're not shipping them at all. Folks, this is not some sort of planned intentional shortage by Nintendo. In fact, demand for switches so high, this is the time that they would want the most shipments they've probably ever made for switch to come out. They'd want, you know, they would want 300,000 switches coming to the US, you know, every single shipment, you know, maybe half a million every single shipment, assuming that shipments only come once a week or so. Like that, that's what they would want to happen. But they can't, they can't satisfy demand. They can't supply and demand are just off the charts right now for switch. And to be honest, folks, the, I don't see switches popularity dwindling just because they can't provide enough stock that can happen to sometimes things stay out of stock for a long, long enough time. People move on, they get their PlayStation threes or Xboxes, whatever DS is and move on with their life. But I do think that when we talk about switches viability for this holiday, I'm not that worried about it, guys. It's next year that I'm going to have a little more concern this year with the pandemic and everything going on. And Nintendo's just an insane amount of evergreen titles that all these new switch owners this year are going to have to go back and play. I'm not too concerned about any of that right now. In fact, I think console wars at this point just don't matter. We're dealing with something that's affecting people in the real world. And we need to be focused on that. But gaming is a great escape. And I hope all of you are finding gaming or Netflix or TV or board games, or maybe you're going on walks, I still go on walks every day, I just try really hard to avoid people because I have a lot more people going on walks now than there once than there was before. So I basically see a person and I turn around and walk the other way. But yeah, thank you guys so much for tuning in. I am Nathan DeRovageance from Nintendo Prime. Be sure to enter that trials amount of giveaway by liking the video, commenting down below, subscribing, hitting that bell icon, all that jazz. I think you guys so much for sticking with me while I am navigating the waters of this pandemic between homeschooling my kids and having to cancel the podcast for a few weeks now just because there's been all crazy stuff going on since school. The school's got closed down and I'm trying my best here to still get content out when I got time and to do my best for you guys. I know it's been a while since we've done a live stream so maybe, I don't know, maybe later today or tomorrow, I can get a stream out to you guys and just chit chat with you guys about gaming and about life in general. Because I miss you all. I really do. But thank you guys so much for tuning in to Nintendo Prime. And I'll catch you guys whenever my next video comes out.