A $519.99 Console With No Game in the Box Just Sold Out Worldwide — and Nintendo Says Don’t Feed the Scalpers

中文版 Chinese version

Prices are US retail as reported on October 25, 2026 — a snapshot, subject to change. Preorder figures are retailer-chart reporting, not Nintendo sales data; Nintendo has published no unit numbers for the console or the game.

The weekend statement

On October 25, 2026, GameRant reported Nintendo’s latest word on the Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition Switch 2: restocks are coming. The substance came from Nintendo of Latin America’s vice president and general manager, Bill van Zyll, who told the outlet Coelho no Japão that Nintendo “underestimated how well [the Zelda Switch 2 console] would be received,” that the console has sold out everywhere, and that the company is “working on replenishments” — with no date, no quantities, and no retailer list attached.

That is the whole news, and it is enough. The console launches Thursday, October 29, at $519.99 — a black-and-gold Triforce dock, green-black-gold Joy-Con 2 controllers, and, notably, no copy of the game it exists to celebrate. The remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time arrives a week later, on November 5, at $59.99 digital / $69.99 physical (pricing as reported at the September 8 Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct). Buy both at list and the anniversary costs you $580–$590 before tax. It sold out anyway — at Nintendo’s own US store within hours of the September announcement, and then, in the words of the October 19 coverage, worldwide.

The game is not the scarce part

Separate the two products, because they have opposite supply stories.

The game is a phenomenon but not a shortage. Reporting on October 12 put Amazon preorders for the remake at more than 100,000 copies, topping Amazon’s Switch 2 chart; physical preorders at Amazon and Walmart were discounted $10 in mid-October coverage, which is not what retailers do with stock they cannot replace. The remake itself is a ground-up rebuild of the 1998 Nintendo 64 original — still the highest-rated game of all time on aggregate charts — with a reported 60 fps target, full voice acting in cutscenes (a series first), a dedicated jump button, revised dungeons, and a new boss-challenge mode, the Hall of Fallen Foes. Even its file size became news this week: Nintendo trimmed the download from 27 GB to 24.54 GB ahead of launch.

The console is the shortage. It is limited by definition, it is the one with the gold Triforce on the dock, and it is the one scalpers circled. Best Buy is holding a midnight launch on November 5 (ET) for the game, with limited numbers of the console and the themed Pro Controller at select stores — described by Kotaku as possibly the last shot at retail price before the resale market sets its own.

The argument, stated plainly

There are two readings of a sold-out $519.99 console that does not include its own game.

The cynical reading: limited editions are manufactured scarcity. Nintendo knows exactly what a 40th-anniversary Zelda box does to collectors; “underestimated demand” is what a company says when the shortage is the marketing, and every restock headline extends the launch by another news cycle.

The charitable reading: Nintendo has been supply-burned in both directions — it overproduced special hardware before and watched it sit — and a themed variant of a console that is itself barely a year into its life cycle is genuinely hard to forecast. Van Zyll’s admission was made to a regional outlet, not scripted into a global press release, which makes it sound less like theatre.

My judgment: the truth is boring and in the middle, but the incentives are not. Whether or not this shortage was planned, it pays — it converts a hardware variant into an event, and it will do so again at every restock. Which is why van Zyll’s implicit advice is the only part of this story a buyer should act on: do not pay the markup. The console plays the same games as the standard Switch 2. The premium buys a dock design and a colourway, and Nintendo has now said, on the record, twice (the store page’s “check back soon” came first), that more are coming.

What to actually do this week

• Thursday, October 29: in-store launch-day stock exists. If you want the console at $519.99, a physical store on launch morning beats refreshing a sold-out web page.
• November 5, midnight ET: Best Buy’s launch event is the second shot — game first, console if your store has them.
• Otherwise, wait. A restock with no date is still a restock. Every week you wait, the scalper price is the thing that falls, not the retail one.

The remake will be judged on its own merits in ten days — whether the voice acting and the jump button honour or overwrite a 28-year-old memory is a real argument, and it is already happening. The console needs no such judgment. It is a $519.99 box, empty of its game, that the market cleared in hours. Nintendo’s job this week is not to sell more of them. It is to make enough that “sold out worldwide” stops being the headline — because right now, the shortage is outselling the celebration.

Sources: GameRant (October 25, 2026) on van Zyll’s restock comments and the $519.99 price; Kotaku and Wario64 on the Best Buy midnight launch; FTMQ Gaming / ThePCEnthusiast (October 12) on Amazon preorders; Nintendo Life, CNET, Forbes, IGN and Polygon (October 14) on the remake’s features; My Nintendo News (October 24) on the 24.54 GB file size.