Nintendo always seems to have a trick up its sleeve.
The latest is a tweet from the company that announced a 'limited number' of pre-orders for the Nintendo Switch would be available this Friday, following this evening's big reveal.
What does this even mean? A pre-order isn't actually a physical thing. A pre-order serves two purposes. First, it let's customers reserve a product down the road so that they're sure to get one when it comes out. Second, it signals to the company just how much consumer interest exists for a product. If a lot of people pre-order the Switch, Nintendo will know that it's a hot-ticket item and can manufacture accordingly.
Limiting pre-orders does nothing for either party. It restricts how many customers can reserve an item and it withholds valuable data from the manufacturer, making it more difficult to meet supply demands at launch. The only purpose a 'limited' Switch pre-order day achieves is driving a little extra hype by getting the most ardent fans (and scalpers) to place their pre-orders as fast as possible. For the much wider audience that Nintendo is hoping to cast its net around, it merely induces head-scratching.
Well, that and fears that Nintendo will artificially create demand by restricting supply at launch,
just like it did with the mini NES Classic Edition before the holidays. It's the same tactic Nintendo used for many of its Amiibo line, creating artificial scarcity of certain figures.
That's no way to treat your loyal customers and it's no way to build a new audience for the Switch. Sure, it's a tried and true method for selling the hottest toys at Christmas, but it's not something a company should do when their last video game console was, by every definition of the word, a huge flop. It plays into the hands of society's most brazen degenerates---scalpers---while punishing Nintendo's true fans.
"
...
