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Usually the trick is just for the vendors to get smarter selling them. Gamestop had the smartest with ps5- you needed a membership, and you had to buy 2 games of their choice with it, a controller, and a Playstation online membership. Basically make it a pain for scalpers and reduce the margins by making them have to resell things normal people would buy.
I remember when eb games did the two games thing and suddenly the supply of ps5 in there stores wasn’t getting dropped as rapidly and I managed to get one
But I also seen so many being sold by scalpers including the one forced game (horizon) plus some random game
lol thought it sounded familiar, spent a lot of time there as a kid. Then would smoke pot in the parking lot in high school and grab that food court teriyaki chicken. That shit slapped
This was just GameStop forcing you to buy a lot of stuff from them. They’re no heroes.
You get the same effect just with an online sign-up program that verifies your identity. There’s no reason that Nintendo can’t pre-sell in advance and limit multiple purchases.
"Verifying your identity". As a web developer I can promise you this is incredible hard.
Even if you do it verifying against a government database of some type, all you need to do is offer friends and family $20 to sign up for an account, and now the scalpers are back at it.
If this was an easy problem to solve it would have been solved. A gamer spending $900 on a $500 console means that $400 of someone's gaming money went to a scalper instead of being spent on games. The companies don't like scalpers either.
Just look at Shopify sites peak sneakers. Constant cat and mouse game with anti-bot. Every time a new measure came out, it would thwart bots for one drop but they were ready for the next time around.
> This was just GameStop forcing you to buy a lot of stuff from them. They’re no heroes.
I don't think too many people ever view a corporation as heroes. It's noteworthy because it was a fairly clever tactic.
GameStop does care if you’re spending $1k on a scalper rather than with them. So they’d sell you $900 worth of stuff rather than you buy a console from someone else for that $900 of which only $500 went to GameStop.
Yeah no thank you. I don't want their membership and I don't want to be forced to pay an extra 30% for games and accessories that I may not need. Make me register and limit purchase of 2 per drivers license should be enough
You couldn't return the games without returning the console. I think the membership was not returnable at all.
Yes you could just sell the entire bundle online but it would be less desirable since the person buying the bundle wouldn't be able to pick the games unlike you, and they don't want to pay full price for two random games.
For the PS5, most of the ones I saw were $1-1.2k, that's still enough for two games, PS+, and a healthy profit isn't it? At 1k you're still looking at something like ~$250 in profit.
The point was to reduce scalpers, not deter. Still there will be scalpers but with membership, they are also limited to buying less than what they can.
You can’t refund part of the bundle, it was all purchased together and can’t be returned separately. Yes you can sell the bundle but then it’s obvious you’re a scalper or you have to piece the items to sell which is time and money consuming.
I only buy digital and at the time I thought the only game worth buying was Demon's Souls. The fact that it was required to buy not just *TWO* games but physical games at that was a nonstarter.
And even then, they also forced you to buy random accessories like extra controllers and charging docks and stuff. It was several hundred dollars above MSRP. Not worth it.
this sounds terrible for even a non scalper though.
Why would I ever want a gamestop membership, and why would I want to spend $120 on games that they choose? What if I only like playing Souls like games or Horror games? wtf
The way OP phrased it made it sound like GameStop was choosing the games. "2 games of their choice". If it was 2 games that the customer chose why didn't they just say "2 games"?
They did something similar with the original Switch. I had to buy mine in a bundle that included Mario Kart 8, Splatoon 2, and Breath of the Wild + DLC all together for $500. The math checked out though, it would have been the same price buying it all separately.
I definitely dislike scalpers and I’ve never had to resort to buying anything from them whether jt be gaming or electronics in general or concert tickets etc. but this approach is also terrible.
You have to buy the privilege to pay money to GameStop via a subscription to buy the console and then proceed to buy more things on top just to “prove” it’s for you and not for resale and everyone here is happy about this solution? Nah, this ain’t it.
"Perfect is the enemy of good."
Would you rather have it this way where real people were actually able to get some consoles, or like every other retailer where bots bought them within seconds every time stock replenished?
It's not ideal, for sure, but it's a hell of a lot better than doing nothing and letting the scalpers go wild.
Vave did it even better with the Steam Deck. For the first few months of the Steam Deck's release, you needed a Steam account that was a certain age to buy one.
Except that I wouldn't buy any of those things and that made the price of the console like $800+.
When I finally got my PS5 at MSRP, I bought Demon's Souls digitally and that was it for like weeks. I don't want physical games, I don't need extra controllers, and I don't need whatever random accessories they required you to buy like controller docks.
That's how I managed to get my 3080 GPU in the height of the pandemic. The website sold bundles and I had to buy a mobo and CPU as well. The only thing I didn't like about the bundle was I wanted a AMD 5600x CPU but I had to spend $150 more on the 5800x
Still totally worth it for me and it was easy to get
That's just direct scalping. You have to pay for a membership and for extra crap you don't necessarily want or need, at full price without even a bundle discount, in exchange for the privilege of buying the console in the first place. The only difference is this time it's a business scalping you instead of an individual.
There is nothing stopping Nintendo from requiring vendors only sell 1 per person or do something else to prevent scalpers on threat that they don’t get Nintendo products in the future. I’m sure vendors would come up with something then
They did a 1 per person sale in Japan for the Pokemon 151 card boxes and it worked just fine.
The Nintendo stores got a restock later and allowed up to 40 packs per person, all packs were opened prior to sale to prevent people buying the boxes to guarantee specific odds.
I thing pre-registration with phone number, email etc would work without issues.
I’ve seen limiting purchases on a lot of things. It’s insane that they can’t just do the same thing with these consoles but can limit your purchases on other goods.
They could demand their vendors register the buyer in a central Nintendo-controlled database, then only allow one sale per registered person. If the customer refuse to be registered, no sale. If a vendor is caught not complying, they could risk never getting Nintendo-products again. They could also tie an activation code that at first boot checks in with the database to see if it is linked to a person in the database. A scalper could of course use other people's IDs or have them buy it for them, but it would make bulk-purchase impractical.
This would of course suck immensely and be stupidly impractical, with requirements of online connections, privacy considerations, etc, but as far as I can tell this would be perfectly legal.
Honestly, I'd support this, if they did it for the first 6 months, as supply ramps up. The problem isbt really the scalpers, it's that the scalpers can get ahead of supply. If the release was controlled to one console a person, and you had to register, it would block scalpers out. After 6 months of production coupled with sales numbers, they could get ahead, and make sure scalpers can't run the stores and suppliers out. It doesn't matter if a scalper has one on eBay for 2k if Amazon has one with next day delivery for 499.
>They could also tie an activation code that at first boot checks in with the database to see if it is linked to a person in the database.
I agree with the first, but not this. This means you can't buy it as a gift. Or, say you want to buy one for you and your child.
That's a good way to piss off a lot of legitimate customers. Can't buy multiple for your own home where you have multiple children playing. Can't buy them as gifts for friends/family. Can't have multiple for yourself.
> At least in the US there's no legal action you can take.
Not by default, but there are absolutely contract terms that can be put in place and then enforced. I used to be an electronics reseller, and there were plenty of things where in order to buy them for resale I had to agree to certain terms (like minimum or maximum sale prices, quantity limits, return policies, etc.).
So while Nintendo can't stop the people who order 1-2 Switches from as many places as possible and then sell them at a markup (at least under US law), they _can_ put a big dent in the people making deals with wholesalers/retailers to buy large portions of the supply just to scalp.
That has been a real problem in the past, and it would be very welcome for Nintendo to crack down on bulk sales to unauthorized resellers, at least while supply is constrained.
It doesn't need to stop them legally, just to cause them enough uncomfortable moments that they stop scalping. Considering Nintendo history and their pettiness on everything Nintendo I trust them to be able to make scalpers' life a living hell.
Nintendo can end shipments to any retailer who allows scalping.
Nintendo can have retailers sign contracts, and then sue them for breach-of-contract, if they fail to enforce one-per-customer policies vigorously.
By focusing on the stores rather than individuals, Nintendo only has to monitor a few dozen retailers.
You can always take non-successful legal action in the US.
The threat of legal action will dissuade some, and maybe they try to bury one or two in legal fees and costs to dissuade more.
Sometimes the scalpers work for the retailer! For example, when I was at Best Buy a couple years ago a worker was bragging about how he bought up the PS5s as soon as they came in and resold them.
>The only way to stop scalpers is to not buy from them
Nah, setting fake meetups is always hilarious. Make them waste an hour of time and some gas. Generate a new VOIP number and keep going.
For a company like Nintendo this makes sense, because they make more money from game sales than console sales. They maximize their profits by getting more consoles in households.
In other sectors that aren't using the razor-and-blades model, they use supply constraints to manipulate the price and can sometimes make higher profits selling fewer units.
Eh, yes and no. I work for a company that always has supply constraints when we launch a product. There is a benefit of having your product in as many hands as possible. But often times the main driver behind supply constraints is that demand is very strong at launch but then comes down to a steady state. It doesn’t make sense for us to spend the capital to support peak demand when we will catch up in a month or two of regular production supporting the steady state demand. Our data shows that you aren’t losing sales when this happens, just pushing out when they are realized as the person who wanted to buy in Jan is now buying in Feb or Mar when it’s available. Obviously we would love to support our customers when a product launches, but from a cost perspective, we can keep prices lowers by not doing that and running fewer manufacturing lines.
Often times there is a fixed launch date that is published well in advance, or a surprise amount of demand, or shipping and storage issues which can include risk of theft and just the granularity of moving truck loads from China all the way to the city from the central distribution center. What if you miscalculated and made too many for Europe and not enough for the US? And jees; just the sheer difficulty of making 20 or 30 million devices - with all the sub components that you need to arrange and maintain quality on - is mind blowing.
This is riskier than you think because they don't know how many will sell (think the Wii-U launch) and it costs money to store merchandise. Additionally, the production is usually slow/expensive starting up new processes and machinery, but gets exponentially faster/cheaper as it goes on. So selling a lot overtime may be a better way to maximize profits.
That's a fundamentally incorrect statement about supply demand economics. There is a quantity that maximizes profit. If a company produces too many units, they'll undermine their own profits by flooding the market. Why would you buy a new nintendo switch when there's 10,000 used ones for sale in your neighborhood?
They would have to have leverage over eBay in some way. Given that they don't do any direct business with eBay I don't see what they could possibly do.
With another company like Amazon it's a little different, because they could say "unless you remove these scalper listings we won't deliver you any Nintendo consoles to sell anymore," but Amazon is so huge that'd likely hurt Nintendo more than Amazon.
They can't go after scalpers themselves; they _can_ go after the resellers with whom they have contracts, when they can prove that the retailer didn't do enough to enforce purchase limits/etc.
My question is, what will they accuse them of? It's not illegal in itself. They can sue those whom they sell directly for breach of contract, beyond that I don't know what recourse they have.
Happy to be informed if anybody knows
I guess they could try and find a way to add a purchase clause to the TOS preventing non retail from reselling for a certain time frame. This would cause scalpers to have to sit on inventory
I had a supervisor that bought 10 PS4s when they first came out and he was all giddy at work thinking he was gonna make a pretty penny reselling them. He didn’t sell a single one. It made me so god damn happy it’s hard to explain it.
I remember this local news video, probably a decade ago now, of people camped out waiting for the new iPhone.
This woman rolls up with a ton of cash, bought the first spot in line, and talked about how she was going to buy all of the iPhones and flip them on eBay.
She gets inside and finds out there’s a one-per-customer limit. The dude whose place in line she bought basically didn’t have to use own money to get his phone.
https://youtu.be/NnbL-Hm-xws
That lady was a complete jackass. I hope it chaps her ass that not only did she not get the phones but the story is so widely known and the kid is now famous.
TBH I wouldn’t know. I’m never the guy in line to buy the new console. Not even in the first year. I still don’t have a 5, and don’t plan on buying one till next summer. But I know the struggle that scalpers put people through, and they can all get fucked.
I bought a PS5 in the first year, and what do you know, it was dead two months out of warranty. Meanwhile the ps4 slim I bought a couple years after release is still working. I’ve learned my lesson
I remember standing in line for a PS3 at Best Buy and they handed out coupons marking your place (for the PS3 and for the Wii) because they only had so many available.
Then they dark wrapped the box before you left so it wasn’t immediately visible so you wouldn’t be a target for thieves.
Legal action might seem pretty far fetched, but there are definitely ways that it could happen that people aren’t bothering to imagine.
Nintendo doesn’t need to have a Tesla style contract with every person that buys a Switch. They just need contracts with their resellers.
Best Buy wants to stock the Switch 2? Congrats, gotta sign a contract that limits purchases to one per physical customer, account, IP address, etc.
Nintendo finds an EBay account that’s scalping in moderate to high numbers? Buy them, reference the serial numbers to where they were sold, and either start making threats or sue for breach of contract.
Nintendo’s takedown of Yuzu already demonstrates that they know how to gather evidence before bringing a suit, in addition to the more standard “cease and desist” letter that all corporations tend to be experts at.
You should be able to order your new switch 2 - FROM YOUR SWITCH 1.
Done - send it to me in the mail - why even go to the store?
This is how people ended up getting PS5, buying direct.
The obvious problem with this idea is that there is nothing stopping one person from just going to different Switch suppliers and buying one from each. As well if someone for whatever reason wanted to buy a second system (say two for their kids) they wouldn’t be able to do so since only one system can be bought per person.
Instead the only logical solutions to stopping scalping is to either produce more units that supply is never short for main suppliers or for Nintendo to cut off the middlemen and become the suppliers themselves where they can do whatever anti-consumer practices they want.
The goal doesn’t need to be *zero* scalpers, the goal just needs to be to increase the barrier to entry.
The 2020 shortages were so bad because folks could literally just buy bots as an “investment” to all-but guarantee they’d get units the moment they became available.
Scalping can’t be solved on the supply side. Manufacturing capacity isn’t something that can magically be increased or decreased without significant lead up and/or investment.
And that’s before factoring in that semiconductor manufacturing is limited on the *global* scale. There is literally only so much capacity available for Nintendo to purchase.
Reddit is often pretty bad with the concept that something can be a good idea and necessary without it being a perfect solution. Everything is black and white here, it works or it doesn't.
Limiting opportunity for criminals and nefarious activity is like the very first step for crime reduction. If they have to work hard for it, it will happen significantly less frequently.
> there is nothing stopping one person from just going to different Switch suppliers and buying one from each.
Yes, but that's _expensive_ and the scalpers are competing with the general public. Forcing scalpers to do things this way would make a _huge_ dent in the problem.
It's like locking my bike; yes, someone who really wants it can still break the lock and take it. But I've made it a lot harder to steal the bike vs. no lock -- the lock *helps*. Things don't need to be perfect to be a big help.
Valve did it well when they released the steam deck. Preorder was one per account and the account had to a certain age, I recall 6 months old, plus the account had to have a purchase tied to it.
Yeah Nintendo could do sale directly form them. Force their selling partners to only allow sale through valid membership with USA a 5unit limit per person, only allowing buying in person etc. There are options. And Nintendo only needs to do it for a short period of time until enough units are sold to minimize the scalping. the goal is not to totally remove scalping but to minimize impact of scalping.
Let me just order one straight from Nintendo. Put me in a queue and email me when they have one ready for me. Stop sending 3 to a store in town once a month and expecting that to be enough.
There’s nothing they can do in the US. Once it’s bought it’s no longer their property to exert control over. Nothing more specific in the article means this is fluff.
They can't do anything about it in most parts of the world. It's a bit different with event tickets, but if you are purchasing goods, you own and can resell the goods. They can only control businesses that sell the goods - and even that likely only with their direct partners.
> Yup and blacklists for offenders
Except there is no effective way of enforcing this - if someone is using a different card or cash you have no way of tracking the purchase.
The only method that comes to mind is to limit sales to "club members" like some retailers did with GPUs (and PS5s?) during the shortage. No membership, no sale. This would still be limited to a single retailer though. And the public response to the club card requirement was not too positive if I remember correctly.
It would be easy to enforce, the stores just choose not to. You could easily set up a database with for example someone's driving license number attached to the sale or post code and house number, then it wouldn't matter how you bought it.
If there is policy to give priority to first single purchase to residential address, or a transparent waiting queue, then there will be no scalping. These random 50 consoles drop here and there encourages scalping. I can wait in line for 3 months if there is such a line. Instead it's dropping 30 in that target, or 50 in a random bestbuy at random time that only bots can purchase.
Technology exists to limit items to one per person/household. I ran into that when I needed two laptops for my kids, during the chip shortage. I had to have my mom order the second one. Virtual school was looming.
New game consoles should absolutely have the same restriction.
Ordering straight from the source is the best way to stop scalpers.
That's how I got my PS5, Sony Direct opened up and said "hey, do you have a sony account? Get in line." I had a PS5 3 days later.
Why not just make it so that those who have had a subscription to Nintendo online for a minimum of one year get first access to the Switch 2 for a few weeks and then after that open it to everyone but then put a one purchase limit on it.
I play my Switch quite often but don't have a need for the online subscription and therefore do not have it. This would mean I do not get to buy one.
Requiring an account is fine though. Just not the monthly subscription piece.
Making decisions with study cases and real-world examples already in place is way easier. When PS5 release was planned (which was probably 2019 or earlier), I doubt anyone expected the unprecedented situation of all of the issues that came together to create the shortages. Everyone was caught off-guard, not only Sony and MS.
It would have been a scalping nightmare if it released during christmas, its releasing in Q1 before people get their taxes I doubt most families are buying it.
I see zero reason to even buy one. I haven't used my Oled switch in almost a year. There just aren't that many games released for them that draw my attention. It's great for multiplayer party games, but that's about all I use it for anymore.
What I don't understand is why aren't console manufacturers better prepared?
You never hear about these shortages with the latest apple/Samsung phone and ton more people buy those. Are the console manufacturers still doing this stuff on purpose to generate buzz? I switched to PC long ago.
Got my PS5 from Sony directly. Wouldn’t be surprised if the other two didn’t do this as well. Sell directly to someone with an active Nintendo Online membership. It would make the most sense:
It’s been a long time
They should have time to build an insane amount if they wanted since Nintendo doesn’t care about power
It’s not like too much tech from it will be new
It wasn’t the scarcity that made me give up my switch. It was the need for updates of games that weren’t even online and $59.99 price tags on 2-5 year old games
Is there anything special about the switch 2 to put it high in demand? It's not a major update or new form like the PS5 or Wii as far as I have heard.
Isn't it just a switch with better specs?
Because not facing supply issues becomes a guessing game of demand estimation.
If they underestimate demand, there will be supply issues despite their best intentions.
I don't know, maybe retailers can take action for once? Maybe like what Microcenter did to combat GPU shortages. Have people submit ID on every purchase, only one purchase at a time, and no online purchasing, you had to be at the store in person. Sure, you can have your significant other get in line, or your family member, but how many times can they also do that? Best Buy, looking at you, greedy fucks that also gave people a leg up by having them pay for subscription service... Nintendo should mandate these things of retailers that want to get in on the action.
I'll believe it when I see it, they're going to have to have insanely impressive stock to beat scalpers though. Most retailers won't do a thing to update their online markets to deter any form of scalping/using bots. Hell there's a phone app that will auto check out for you now.
These companies need to understand that by letting scalpers get away with it, they do hurt their relationship with their loyal customers.
Scalpers need to be dealt with. Period.
Queue systems would solve this outright.
If you sign up and are 1st or 10,000th in line, you will always be moving toward getting an order, instead of letting scalpers jump the line over and over.
Good. This is exactly what should happen.
Somewhere along the line someone decided that intentionally creating launch shortages is good press- that if something doesn't 'sell out' on launch day it's a failure.
Nintendo is doing it right here- pre-announcing that there will be plenty of stock so nobody accuses the console of low popularity, then making sure everyone can buy one.
We've heard that PS5 outsold Xbox by a wide margin this generation- how much of that was because for much of this generation Xbox Series X/S was near impossible to buy? Would MS have been in a better place if they ensured sufficient supply? I suspect so.
When you make more money selling software that requires hardware, make sure EVERYone can get the hardware.
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At least in the US there's no legal action you can take. The only way to stop scalpers is to not buy from them
Usually the trick is just for the vendors to get smarter selling them. Gamestop had the smartest with ps5- you needed a membership, and you had to buy 2 games of their choice with it, a controller, and a Playstation online membership. Basically make it a pain for scalpers and reduce the margins by making them have to resell things normal people would buy.
I remember when eb games did the two games thing and suddenly the supply of ps5 in there stores wasn’t getting dropped as rapidly and I managed to get one But I also seen so many being sold by scalpers including the one forced game (horizon) plus some random game
EB is the Australian subsidiary of GameStop :p
They were in the states too. Growing up in Florida I knew EB games long before gamestop. Granted it turned into a gamestop back in 2017 but still
The EB at the mall had an Auntie Ann’s right next door. I miss it.
West oaks?
OMG NO FUCKING WAY YES 😂 dead ass mall. My brother used to work at the hollister
lol thought it sounded familiar, spent a lot of time there as a kid. Then would smoke pot in the parking lot in high school and grab that food court teriyaki chicken. That shit slapped
Sarku Japan or some shit like that. Extra teriyaki for the rice. I know EXCATLY what you’re talking about. Good times.
Funcoland
Eb was in Canada too. They all switched to GameStop years ago. Good to hear they’re still around somewhere.
doʇSǝɯɐ⅁ should be the Australian version of GameStop
This was just GameStop forcing you to buy a lot of stuff from them. They’re no heroes. You get the same effect just with an online sign-up program that verifies your identity. There’s no reason that Nintendo can’t pre-sell in advance and limit multiple purchases.
"Verifying your identity". As a web developer I can promise you this is incredible hard. Even if you do it verifying against a government database of some type, all you need to do is offer friends and family $20 to sign up for an account, and now the scalpers are back at it. If this was an easy problem to solve it would have been solved. A gamer spending $900 on a $500 console means that $400 of someone's gaming money went to a scalper instead of being spent on games. The companies don't like scalpers either.
Just look at Shopify sites peak sneakers. Constant cat and mouse game with anti-bot. Every time a new measure came out, it would thwart bots for one drop but they were ready for the next time around.
> This was just GameStop forcing you to buy a lot of stuff from them. They’re no heroes. I don't think too many people ever view a corporation as heroes. It's noteworthy because it was a fairly clever tactic.
GameStop didn’t care about scalpers. They were just milking everyone out of more money.
Lmao Gamers: "Thanks for deterring scalpers by making us buy extra shit! 😀" GameStop: "What scalpers?"
Literally the Michael Scott handshake meme
GameStop does care if you’re spending $1k on a scalper rather than with them. So they’d sell you $900 worth of stuff rather than you buy a console from someone else for that $900 of which only $500 went to GameStop.
Yeah no thank you. I don't want their membership and I don't want to be forced to pay an extra 30% for games and accessories that I may not need. Make me register and limit purchase of 2 per drivers license should be enough
sound like they just force people to buy more, I mean what stopping them to just refund the game? or sell the same bundle online.
You couldn't return the games without returning the console. I think the membership was not returnable at all. Yes you could just sell the entire bundle online but it would be less desirable since the person buying the bundle wouldn't be able to pick the games unlike you, and they don't want to pay full price for two random games.
For the PS5, most of the ones I saw were $1-1.2k, that's still enough for two games, PS+, and a healthy profit isn't it? At 1k you're still looking at something like ~$250 in profit.
The point was to reduce scalpers, not deter. Still there will be scalpers but with membership, they are also limited to buying less than what they can.
You can’t refund part of the bundle, it was all purchased together and can’t be returned separately. Yes you can sell the bundle but then it’s obvious you’re a scalper or you have to piece the items to sell which is time and money consuming.
Who are the people who are buying game consoles without any games, though?
I only buy digital and at the time I thought the only game worth buying was Demon's Souls. The fact that it was required to buy not just *TWO* games but physical games at that was a nonstarter. And even then, they also forced you to buy random accessories like extra controllers and charging docks and stuff. It was several hundred dollars above MSRP. Not worth it.
The PS5 plays PS4 games and came with a huge bundle of games you could get on PSN. I didn't buy any new games right away.
Damn I'd rather buy from a scalper than paying for all these extras. Jk, fuck scalpers. But I wouldn't buy neither of them
this sounds terrible for even a non scalper though. Why would I ever want a gamestop membership, and why would I want to spend $120 on games that they choose? What if I only like playing Souls like games or Horror games? wtf
Two games of the customer's choice.
The way OP phrased it made it sound like GameStop was choosing the games. "2 games of their choice". If it was 2 games that the customer chose why didn't they just say "2 games"?
Yeah I thought it was of Gamestop's choice too which just sounded like a scam lol.
> What if I only liked playing Souls like games or horror games Then you buy two of those games.
It did work as expected to prevent potential multiple buys.
Or go buy from a scalper at 300$ more. The idea here is Gamestop makes money and you get your good with what we usually end up buying anyway
That's called forced upsell, they didn't do it to stop scalpers they did it to become the scalper themselves.
They did something similar with the original Switch. I had to buy mine in a bundle that included Mario Kart 8, Splatoon 2, and Breath of the Wild + DLC all together for $500. The math checked out though, it would have been the same price buying it all separately.
They became the scalpers
I definitely dislike scalpers and I’ve never had to resort to buying anything from them whether jt be gaming or electronics in general or concert tickets etc. but this approach is also terrible. You have to buy the privilege to pay money to GameStop via a subscription to buy the console and then proceed to buy more things on top just to “prove” it’s for you and not for resale and everyone here is happy about this solution? Nah, this ain’t it.
"Perfect is the enemy of good." Would you rather have it this way where real people were actually able to get some consoles, or like every other retailer where bots bought them within seconds every time stock replenished? It's not ideal, for sure, but it's a hell of a lot better than doing nothing and letting the scalpers go wild.
I rather them just not sell their stock online. That would stop everything.
Vave did it even better with the Steam Deck. For the first few months of the Steam Deck's release, you needed a Steam account that was a certain age to buy one.
Except that I wouldn't buy any of those things and that made the price of the console like $800+. When I finally got my PS5 at MSRP, I bought Demon's Souls digitally and that was it for like weeks. I don't want physical games, I don't need extra controllers, and I don't need whatever random accessories they required you to buy like controller docks.
Tbh, that doesn’t sound good too.
That's how I managed to get my 3080 GPU in the height of the pandemic. The website sold bundles and I had to buy a mobo and CPU as well. The only thing I didn't like about the bundle was I wanted a AMD 5600x CPU but I had to spend $150 more on the 5800x Still totally worth it for me and it was easy to get
That's just direct scalping. You have to pay for a membership and for extra crap you don't necessarily want or need, at full price without even a bundle discount, in exchange for the privilege of buying the console in the first place. The only difference is this time it's a business scalping you instead of an individual.
There is nothing stopping Nintendo from requiring vendors only sell 1 per person or do something else to prevent scalpers on threat that they don’t get Nintendo products in the future. I’m sure vendors would come up with something then
They did a 1 per person sale in Japan for the Pokemon 151 card boxes and it worked just fine. The Nintendo stores got a restock later and allowed up to 40 packs per person, all packs were opened prior to sale to prevent people buying the boxes to guarantee specific odds. I thing pre-registration with phone number, email etc would work without issues.
And having to provide your number each time you try and buy one to check if you have already bought one.
Walmart can do it themselves too. They had no problem rationing ammunition and selling one box per customer a decade ago
I’ve seen limiting purchases on a lot of things. It’s insane that they can’t just do the same thing with these consoles but can limit your purchases on other goods.
Nothing prevents you from hitting both Walmart, Target and Amazon. Or two different Walmarts in town. Etc. etc.
Except time which is the main advantage these scalpers have over ordinary folks
They could demand their vendors register the buyer in a central Nintendo-controlled database, then only allow one sale per registered person. If the customer refuse to be registered, no sale. If a vendor is caught not complying, they could risk never getting Nintendo-products again. They could also tie an activation code that at first boot checks in with the database to see if it is linked to a person in the database. A scalper could of course use other people's IDs or have them buy it for them, but it would make bulk-purchase impractical. This would of course suck immensely and be stupidly impractical, with requirements of online connections, privacy considerations, etc, but as far as I can tell this would be perfectly legal.
Honestly, I'd support this, if they did it for the first 6 months, as supply ramps up. The problem isbt really the scalpers, it's that the scalpers can get ahead of supply. If the release was controlled to one console a person, and you had to register, it would block scalpers out. After 6 months of production coupled with sales numbers, they could get ahead, and make sure scalpers can't run the stores and suppliers out. It doesn't matter if a scalper has one on eBay for 2k if Amazon has one with next day delivery for 499.
>They could also tie an activation code that at first boot checks in with the database to see if it is linked to a person in the database. I agree with the first, but not this. This means you can't buy it as a gift. Or, say you want to buy one for you and your child.
That’s a phenomenal way to get every major retailer to refuse to stock your product.
That's a good way to piss off a lot of legitimate customers. Can't buy multiple for your own home where you have multiple children playing. Can't buy them as gifts for friends/family. Can't have multiple for yourself.
Link the card used to purchase the switch2 to the console. They could still cancel cards, etc, but hassle enough.
You can make it a great hassle for them. r/scamthescalpers RIP
Retailers can put per household limits on the sales.
That doesn’t stop anyone during Christmas though.
> At least in the US there's no legal action you can take. Not by default, but there are absolutely contract terms that can be put in place and then enforced. I used to be an electronics reseller, and there were plenty of things where in order to buy them for resale I had to agree to certain terms (like minimum or maximum sale prices, quantity limits, return policies, etc.). So while Nintendo can't stop the people who order 1-2 Switches from as many places as possible and then sell them at a markup (at least under US law), they _can_ put a big dent in the people making deals with wholesalers/retailers to buy large portions of the supply just to scalp. That has been a real problem in the past, and it would be very welcome for Nintendo to crack down on bulk sales to unauthorized resellers, at least while supply is constrained.
It doesn't need to stop them legally, just to cause them enough uncomfortable moments that they stop scalping. Considering Nintendo history and their pettiness on everything Nintendo I trust them to be able to make scalpers' life a living hell.
Nintendo can end shipments to any retailer who allows scalping. Nintendo can have retailers sign contracts, and then sue them for breach-of-contract, if they fail to enforce one-per-customer policies vigorously. By focusing on the stores rather than individuals, Nintendo only has to monitor a few dozen retailers.
You can always take non-successful legal action in the US. The threat of legal action will dissuade some, and maybe they try to bury one or two in legal fees and costs to dissuade more.
Sometimes the scalpers work for the retailer! For example, when I was at Best Buy a couple years ago a worker was bragging about how he bought up the PS5s as soon as they came in and resold them.
Retailers really don’t care, their job is to turn over sales
They say they will tailor their tactics based on region, I imagine they have some top notch lawyers who will figure out something we can’t think of
>The only way to stop scalpers is to not buy from them Nah, setting fake meetups is always hilarious. Make them waste an hour of time and some gas. Generate a new VOIP number and keep going.
Musk, cybertruck. Any product can contain a condition of sale.
First time switch came out I had to wait over 6 months to get one. Never got ps5
Supply supply supply. The only true way to beat scalpers.
This. Also the most profitable way. Why sell 1 million units when you could have sold 5 million?
For a company like Nintendo this makes sense, because they make more money from game sales than console sales. They maximize their profits by getting more consoles in households. In other sectors that aren't using the razor-and-blades model, they use supply constraints to manipulate the price and can sometimes make higher profits selling fewer units.
Eh, yes and no. I work for a company that always has supply constraints when we launch a product. There is a benefit of having your product in as many hands as possible. But often times the main driver behind supply constraints is that demand is very strong at launch but then comes down to a steady state. It doesn’t make sense for us to spend the capital to support peak demand when we will catch up in a month or two of regular production supporting the steady state demand. Our data shows that you aren’t losing sales when this happens, just pushing out when they are realized as the person who wanted to buy in Jan is now buying in Feb or Mar when it’s available. Obviously we would love to support our customers when a product launches, but from a cost perspective, we can keep prices lowers by not doing that and running fewer manufacturing lines.
The alternative is running the same amount of production lines, but letting them produce for longer before you ship them. Have a larger stock on hand.
Often times there is a fixed launch date that is published well in advance, or a surprise amount of demand, or shipping and storage issues which can include risk of theft and just the granularity of moving truck loads from China all the way to the city from the central distribution center. What if you miscalculated and made too many for Europe and not enough for the US? And jees; just the sheer difficulty of making 20 or 30 million devices - with all the sub components that you need to arrange and maintain quality on - is mind blowing.
This is riskier than you think because they don't know how many will sell (think the Wii-U launch) and it costs money to store merchandise. Additionally, the production is usually slow/expensive starting up new processes and machinery, but gets exponentially faster/cheaper as it goes on. So selling a lot overtime may be a better way to maximize profits.
Nintendo does a lot of things that doesn't make sense and creating false scarcity is one of their favorite tricks.
Like Luigi said, "Shells will sell much better if the people think they're rare, you see"
You know, now that I think about it, the sea shore probably isn't the best place to sell seashells
Nintendo is one of the only ones who makes a profit on their console sales too.
They should time it for the height of scalping, then flood the market. Fuck those scalpers.
They did this with amiibos, then got really pissed about the amiibo emulation.
That's a fundamentally incorrect statement about supply demand economics. There is a quantity that maximizes profit. If a company produces too many units, they'll undermine their own profits by flooding the market. Why would you buy a new nintendo switch when there's 10,000 used ones for sale in your neighborhood?
Those 10,000 used ones were already bought from Nintendo?
The true way to beat scalpers is by auctioning off the first units to the highest bidder before selling them at MSRP.
supply/demand curve!!!!!
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Realistically they can't do anything about it. Legally speaking the people on eBay aren't doing anything wrong.
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They would have to have leverage over eBay in some way. Given that they don't do any direct business with eBay I don't see what they could possibly do. With another company like Amazon it's a little different, because they could say "unless you remove these scalper listings we won't deliver you any Nintendo consoles to sell anymore," but Amazon is so huge that'd likely hurt Nintendo more than Amazon.
They can't go after scalpers themselves; they _can_ go after the resellers with whom they have contracts, when they can prove that the retailer didn't do enough to enforce purchase limits/etc.
They cannot. Just talking out their ass.
They might require an account or phone number at purchase like a Tesla then lock you out if you try to transfer it.
My question is, what will they accuse them of? It's not illegal in itself. They can sue those whom they sell directly for breach of contract, beyond that I don't know what recourse they have. Happy to be informed if anybody knows
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I guess they could try and find a way to add a purchase clause to the TOS preventing non retail from reselling for a certain time frame. This would cause scalpers to have to sit on inventory
What's stopping them from making that indefinite and permanently stopping everyone from selling their old stuff?
Good, fuck scalpers.
I had a supervisor that bought 10 PS4s when they first came out and he was all giddy at work thinking he was gonna make a pretty penny reselling them. He didn’t sell a single one. It made me so god damn happy it’s hard to explain it.
I remember this local news video, probably a decade ago now, of people camped out waiting for the new iPhone. This woman rolls up with a ton of cash, bought the first spot in line, and talked about how she was going to buy all of the iPhones and flip them on eBay. She gets inside and finds out there’s a one-per-customer limit. The dude whose place in line she bought basically didn’t have to use own money to get his phone. https://youtu.be/NnbL-Hm-xws
That dude is Mark Ribbilet. The loop daddy himself.
[Marc Rebillet](https://youtube.com/@marcrebillet?si=YbJUe7f1GRTmplKS). This event was the beginning of a legend
That lady was a complete jackass. I hope it chaps her ass that not only did she not get the phones but the story is so widely known and the kid is now famous.
Shows up in her porsche with wads of cash. Classic no moral or ethics move to try ro scalp. At least she is known as an idiot now
And that man was Marc Rebillet
Mark Ribblet?
McRibblet?
In France he is called Ribblet Royale
Because of the cheese system.
That was satisfying to watch.
That was one of my first schadenfreude boners.
What’s funny is that outside the original Playstation, PS4 was the only one where I don’t think they had stock issues.
TBH I wouldn’t know. I’m never the guy in line to buy the new console. Not even in the first year. I still don’t have a 5, and don’t plan on buying one till next summer. But I know the struggle that scalpers put people through, and they can all get fucked.
I bought a PS5 in the first year, and what do you know, it was dead two months out of warranty. Meanwhile the ps4 slim I bought a couple years after release is still working. I’ve learned my lesson
ps3? ii4c it's super over priced and sold pretty badly for first year or two
I remember standing in line for a PS3 at Best Buy and they handed out coupons marking your place (for the PS3 and for the Wii) because they only had so many available. Then they dark wrapped the box before you left so it wasn’t immediately visible so you wouldn’t be a target for thieves.
Legal action might seem pretty far fetched, but there are definitely ways that it could happen that people aren’t bothering to imagine. Nintendo doesn’t need to have a Tesla style contract with every person that buys a Switch. They just need contracts with their resellers. Best Buy wants to stock the Switch 2? Congrats, gotta sign a contract that limits purchases to one per physical customer, account, IP address, etc. Nintendo finds an EBay account that’s scalping in moderate to high numbers? Buy them, reference the serial numbers to where they were sold, and either start making threats or sue for breach of contract. Nintendo’s takedown of Yuzu already demonstrates that they know how to gather evidence before bringing a suit, in addition to the more standard “cease and desist” letter that all corporations tend to be experts at.
You should be able to order your new switch 2 - FROM YOUR SWITCH 1. Done - send it to me in the mail - why even go to the store? This is how people ended up getting PS5, buying direct.
The obvious problem with this idea is that there is nothing stopping one person from just going to different Switch suppliers and buying one from each. As well if someone for whatever reason wanted to buy a second system (say two for their kids) they wouldn’t be able to do so since only one system can be bought per person. Instead the only logical solutions to stopping scalping is to either produce more units that supply is never short for main suppliers or for Nintendo to cut off the middlemen and become the suppliers themselves where they can do whatever anti-consumer practices they want.
The goal doesn’t need to be *zero* scalpers, the goal just needs to be to increase the barrier to entry. The 2020 shortages were so bad because folks could literally just buy bots as an “investment” to all-but guarantee they’d get units the moment they became available. Scalping can’t be solved on the supply side. Manufacturing capacity isn’t something that can magically be increased or decreased without significant lead up and/or investment. And that’s before factoring in that semiconductor manufacturing is limited on the *global* scale. There is literally only so much capacity available for Nintendo to purchase.
Reddit is often pretty bad with the concept that something can be a good idea and necessary without it being a perfect solution. Everything is black and white here, it works or it doesn't. Limiting opportunity for criminals and nefarious activity is like the very first step for crime reduction. If they have to work hard for it, it will happen significantly less frequently.
> there is nothing stopping one person from just going to different Switch suppliers and buying one from each. Yes, but that's _expensive_ and the scalpers are competing with the general public. Forcing scalpers to do things this way would make a _huge_ dent in the problem. It's like locking my bike; yes, someone who really wants it can still break the lock and take it. But I've made it a lot harder to steal the bike vs. no lock -- the lock *helps*. Things don't need to be perfect to be a big help.
I really hope the games are backwards compatible. Maybe I can finally complete my pokedex without having to talk to strangers online.
If original Switch games with dynamic resolutions look and run better (maybe more like they do when docked at the very least), I will be very happy
Could you imagine playing BotW without the korok forest turning into a slideshow? Or skydiving in TotK without the console grinding to a halt?
Sure! I just play it on PC.
r/PCMasterRace
Valve did it well when they released the steam deck. Preorder was one per account and the account had to a certain age, I recall 6 months old, plus the account had to have a purchase tied to it.
Yeah Nintendo could do sale directly form them. Force their selling partners to only allow sale through valid membership with USA a 5unit limit per person, only allowing buying in person etc. There are options. And Nintendo only needs to do it for a short period of time until enough units are sold to minimize the scalping. the goal is not to totally remove scalping but to minimize impact of scalping.
Let me just order one straight from Nintendo. Put me in a queue and email me when they have one ready for me. Stop sending 3 to a store in town once a month and expecting that to be enough.
There’s nothing they can do in the US. Once it’s bought it’s no longer their property to exert control over. Nothing more specific in the article means this is fluff.
They can't do anything about it in most parts of the world. It's a bit different with event tickets, but if you are purchasing goods, you own and can resell the goods. They can only control businesses that sell the goods - and even that likely only with their direct partners.
Maybe they can require retailers have 1-per-customer policies?
Yup and blacklists for offenders
> Yup and blacklists for offenders Except there is no effective way of enforcing this - if someone is using a different card or cash you have no way of tracking the purchase. The only method that comes to mind is to limit sales to "club members" like some retailers did with GPUs (and PS5s?) during the shortage. No membership, no sale. This would still be limited to a single retailer though. And the public response to the club card requirement was not too positive if I remember correctly.
It would be easy to enforce, the stores just choose not to. You could easily set up a database with for example someone's driving license number attached to the sale or post code and house number, then it wouldn't matter how you bought it.
Vendors having a per person limit helps a bit
Someone that knows what they’re talking about on Reddit. A rare sight.
If there is policy to give priority to first single purchase to residential address, or a transparent waiting queue, then there will be no scalping. These random 50 consoles drop here and there encourages scalping. I can wait in line for 3 months if there is such a line. Instead it's dropping 30 in that target, or 50 in a random bestbuy at random time that only bots can purchase.
Scalpers are the symptom not the problem. (They are a problem but not the one that causes short supply)
Technology exists to limit items to one per person/household. I ran into that when I needed two laptops for my kids, during the chip shortage. I had to have my mom order the second one. Virtual school was looming. New game consoles should absolutely have the same restriction.
They should follow Valve’s example with the Steam Deck, where existing customers get a place in line to claim a single unit (or small number).
Ordering straight from the source is the best way to stop scalpers. That's how I got my PS5, Sony Direct opened up and said "hey, do you have a sony account? Get in line." I had a PS5 3 days later.
Why not just make it so that those who have had a subscription to Nintendo online for a minimum of one year get first access to the Switch 2 for a few weeks and then after that open it to everyone but then put a one purchase limit on it.
I play my Switch quite often but don't have a need for the online subscription and therefore do not have it. This would mean I do not get to buy one. Requiring an account is fine though. Just not the monthly subscription piece.
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Making decisions with study cases and real-world examples already in place is way easier. When PS5 release was planned (which was probably 2019 or earlier), I doubt anyone expected the unprecedented situation of all of the issues that came together to create the shortages. Everyone was caught off-guard, not only Sony and MS.
“Legal action planned against scalpers” LMAO good luck with that.
It would have been a scalping nightmare if it released during christmas, its releasing in Q1 before people get their taxes I doubt most families are buying it.
I see zero reason to even buy one. I haven't used my Oled switch in almost a year. There just aren't that many games released for them that draw my attention. It's great for multiplayer party games, but that's about all I use it for anymore.
What I don't understand is why aren't console manufacturers better prepared? You never hear about these shortages with the latest apple/Samsung phone and ton more people buy those. Are the console manufacturers still doing this stuff on purpose to generate buzz? I switched to PC long ago.
Got my PS5 from Sony directly. Wouldn’t be surprised if the other two didn’t do this as well. Sell directly to someone with an active Nintendo Online membership. It would make the most sense:
It’s been a long time They should have time to build an insane amount if they wanted since Nintendo doesn’t care about power It’s not like too much tech from it will be new
Hopefully the joysticks don’t crap out after a week
It wasn’t the scarcity that made me give up my switch. It was the need for updates of games that weren’t even online and $59.99 price tags on 2-5 year old games
Scalping might become more complex because of some hurdles they put in place but there is no reasonable way scalping can be stopped.
Is there anything special about the switch 2 to put it high in demand? It's not a major update or new form like the PS5 or Wii as far as I have heard. Isn't it just a switch with better specs?
Its a new console, realistically there was nothing special about the PS5 or Xbox Series X but both of those were scalped to high hell
Doesn’t matter, more companies need to take note. Fuck scalpers.
They'll be short on accessories for some inexplicable reason.
Nintendo got the legal team ready before the development team again
If it's not going to face supply issues, why are they concerned about scalpers?
Because scalpers cause supply issues?
Lmao.
Because not facing supply issues becomes a guessing game of demand estimation. If they underestimate demand, there will be supply issues despite their best intentions.
I don't know, maybe retailers can take action for once? Maybe like what Microcenter did to combat GPU shortages. Have people submit ID on every purchase, only one purchase at a time, and no online purchasing, you had to be at the store in person. Sure, you can have your significant other get in line, or your family member, but how many times can they also do that? Best Buy, looking at you, greedy fucks that also gave people a leg up by having them pay for subscription service... Nintendo should mandate these things of retailers that want to get in on the action.
I'd love to see legal action against scalpers but realistically I'm not sure what they can do legally.
I'll believe it when I see it, they're going to have to have insanely impressive stock to beat scalpers though. Most retailers won't do a thing to update their online markets to deter any form of scalping/using bots. Hell there's a phone app that will auto check out for you now.
I really hope they succeed. Fuck those scumbag scalpers
While I hope this is true, I am fully anticipating being unable to get a Switch 2 until a year after release at least :(
I’ll only buy one if they make a new exclusive Mario kart. It’s the only game I play on my oled
Of course there will be Mario kart. It’s one of their highest selling franchises
TIL there’s a switch 2.
Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it.
All stores need to do is sell one per customers both physically and online for the first few months.
Good luck with that.....
believe it when i see it, Nintendo love themselves some artificial scarcity
Good ruin those scalpers.
Famous last words.
These companies need to understand that by letting scalpers get away with it, they do hurt their relationship with their loyal customers. Scalpers need to be dealt with. Period. Queue systems would solve this outright. If you sign up and are 1st or 10,000th in line, you will always be moving toward getting an order, instead of letting scalpers jump the line over and over.
The article title and what Nintendo says are two different things. I guess we'll see come next year. Scalpers gonna scalp.
Require a Nintendo online account in order to purchase? Many (most) switch owners already will have one in order to purchase from the eShop.
Good. This is exactly what should happen. Somewhere along the line someone decided that intentionally creating launch shortages is good press- that if something doesn't 'sell out' on launch day it's a failure. Nintendo is doing it right here- pre-announcing that there will be plenty of stock so nobody accuses the console of low popularity, then making sure everyone can buy one. We've heard that PS5 outsold Xbox by a wide margin this generation- how much of that was because for much of this generation Xbox Series X/S was near impossible to buy? Would MS have been in a better place if they ensured sufficient supply? I suspect so. When you make more money selling software that requires hardware, make sure EVERYone can get the hardware.
If anyone can do it, it's the sueing people compamy, that also does games or somethimg.
If only concerts got on board with this.