Nintendo recently revealed that 2.2 million people applied to pre-order the Switch 2 through My Nintendo Store in Japan alone – a staggering number considering you had to clear special conditions related to total play time and NSO subscription time to apply. Due to the demand far exceeding what Nintendo was prepared for, the company warned that a significant number of applicants would not win the (lottery-based) right to buy a Switch 2 in the first round of pre-orders.
An unofficial survey conducted by Nintendo content creator R_GameTV has gathered around 60,000 responses from people who applied for a Switch 2 in Japan, offering some insight into which SKUs are the most popular.
According to the breakdown, an overwhelming 69.7% of applicants (including both people who won and lost the lottery) opted for the Japanese-language-only Switch 2 bundled with Mario Kart World. This SKU is region-locked and can only be used in Japan and in the Japanese language – however, it’s comparatively affordable, with the Mario Kart World bundle priced at around $375.
27.5% of pre-order applicants chose the Japanese-language Switch 2 on its own, which costs around $347. On the other hand, only 2.9% expressed interest in the regular, multi-language system, which is considerably more expensive at around $487. Nintendo already received a lot of praise in Japan when it first announced that there would be a domestic version of the console, but these numbers really drive home how significant the cheaper alternative is likely going be for their sales strategy.
As an aside, according to the survey, around 24.4% of applicants (across all SKUs) won the pre-order lottery. If this sample is applied to the total 2.2 million applicants, it would suggest that Nintendo prepared around 537,000 units for the first round of pre-orders. While the figure should be taken with a large grain of salt as the survey is unofficial, it makes sense why Nintendo found the demand overwhelming compared to what they prepared for.
