Nintendo Has a Strategy in Place Against Nintendo Switch 2 Scalpers

On February 4, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa told Nikkei that Nintendo is working to ensure that everyone who wants to buy a Nintendo Switch 2 is able to buy one.

In an interview translated by Video Game Chronicle, Furukawa revealed that they have learned from the Switch’s launch. Nintendo is now preparing countermeasures to prevent rampant scalping from happening. That countermeasure is to simply increase the amount of Switch 2 in the market.

Scalpers typically make money by introducing a fake supply shortage of high-demand goods. Consoles and graphics cards are typically the main targets of scalpers. What they do is they buy them in large numbers which creates an artificial supply shortage. Then they sell them at a higher price.

Some retailers combat this by only selling one console or GPU per person, but scalpers found a way around this by hiring other people to buy the goods for them. As such, the only way to curb this practice is to introduce enough of the goods to the market so that everyone who wants to buy them will be able to get one. This is what Nintendo has in mind to combat the scalping of the Nintendo Switch 2.

However, the company should still be careful not to overproduce the console or they might lose money. According to Mat Piscatella, an analyst from Circana, he believes that the Switch 2 will sell around 4.3 million units if Nintendo releases it during the first half of the year.

The Nintendo Switch 2 will be released in 2025. Nintendo revealed the console on January 16.