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Walmart Cancels Zelda 40th Anniversary Switch 2 Pre-Orders the Day Before Delivery, While Its Site Shows the Console at $700
Buyers who pre-ordered Nintendo's $519.99 Zelda 40th Anniversary Switch 2 from Walmart got cancellation emails a day before it was due, customer service told them Walmart had oversold, and the listing now shows the console at $700.
The email showed up a day early, just not the box. Several people who pre-ordered Nintendo’s Zelda-themed Switch 2 through Walmart got notices that their orders were canceled because the delivery was “out of stock,” Kenneth Shepard reported for Kotaku on October 28. Out of stock is a strange thing to hear about a pre-order, which exists precisely so the store can count what it needs.
Customers who contacted Walmart’s customer service say they were told the retailer oversold its pre-orders and that there “literally isn’t [a console] in stock to send me,” Kotaku reports. Kotaku’s account rests on those buyers’ posts; it doesn’t include a statement from Walmart.
The hardware is Nintendo’s first special edition Switch 2. Nintendo Life reported in September that the console launches October 29 and that “the limited-edition console will set you back $519.99 USD.” Nintendo’s own store page lists green-and-gold Joy-Con 2, a dock, grip and cables in the box, and says plainly “(Game not included.)” Kotaku’s headline ties the console to the Ocarina of Time remake, but the box itself is hardware only.
Walmart’s listing, still out of stock, shows the console at $700, nearly $200 over what these buyers originally paid, according to Kotaku, which says the price may be a third-party seller using Walmart’s marketplace to scalp. One buyer’s take, quoted by Kotaku: “This is unethical sales practice,” adding that Walmart “shouldn’t allow pre-orders beyond what they can stock.”
Other people in those threads said Walmart has canceled pre-orders on them before. What nobody has heard yet is whether Walmart will honor the original price for the buyers it cut, or how many orders it took past what it could fill.
Retailers that sell both their own stock and third-party listings on one page will keep running into this, and the likely fix is a boring one: pre-order caps tied to confirmed allocation, or marketplace listings hidden while a retailer’s own pre-orders are unfilled. Until Walmart says how many orders it cut, buyers are left guessing whether a second pre-order there is any safer than the first.