We have some interesting information on how the Switch 2 pre-orders went in Japan.
As you may remember, Nintendo faced such steep demand for the Switch 2 in Japan that company president Shuntaro Furukawa came out to apologize. They made it clear that even with their preparations, they did not have the capacity to fulfill all 2.2 million requested pre-orders from MyNintendo customers on launch day.
While Nintendo made these announcements to manage demand and mitigate potential backlash, not everyone who pre-ordered through MyNintendo had a bad experience. As explained in this article on The Famicast, Japanese fans started online polls to ask who pre-ordered what system and who was successful in getting their pre-orders in.
Twitter user @2021nZelda came up with these findings:
- Japanese-Language System (Japan Only): 24.6% Won | 75.4% Lost
- Japanese-Language System Mario Kart World Bundle): 25.3% Won | 74.7% Lost
- Multi-Language System: 56.7% Won | 43.3% Lost
Subsequently, Twitter user shared these results:
- Japanese-Language System Mario Kart World Bundle: 25.1% Won (4,281/17,049) | 74.9 % Lost
- Japanese-Language System: 18% Won (1,105/6,112) | 82% Lost
- Multi-Language System: 91.7% Won (710/774) | 8.3 % Lost
Of course, these were not run by professional pollsters and public opinion researchers. Subsequently, Nintendo may be looking at the actual data themselves, but they’re not likely to share it unless they find some benefit for doing so. With all this taken into account, as well as the variance in both polls, it still seems safe to say that Japanese gamers are more likely to successfully pre-order the more expensive multi-language version of the Switch 2.
Subsequently, there will be a second lottery in Japan for Switch 2 pre-orders, and it looks like Nintendo only has the multi-language version available now. That lottery will run from April 28 to May 19, so it looks like there’ll be a lot more opportunities for Japanese gamers to secure their pre-orders this time.
For his part, industry analyst David Gibson chimed in on another one of these surveys, stating:
“Fascinating survey, if indicative of wider activity = 25% chance of getting Switch 2 in the Nintendo shop pre-orders, Mario bundle was about 70% of supply.”
It stood to reason that the Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle would see the highest demand, as the cheapest way to get into both the console and its biggest launch title. And this suggests that Nintendo made the most supply of the same bundle around the world as well, not that Nintendo made enough of them. In any case, it looks like Nintendo will have to deal with massive demand for the coming weeks, if not months.
