Does anyone remember Black Friday? Not the thing where Amazon throws flash sales and daily deals at you until you break and buy a blender you don't even want or need. No, you fools, I'm talking about real Black Friday. The get up at 4am and stand in line outside of Toys-R-Us for buy-one-get-one-free Amiibos Black Friday. The line of people sleeping in folding chairs outside Best Buy for doorbuster DVDs Black Friday. Remember Black Friday? Remember how 🃏much evꦺeryone hated it?
I worked retail on six different Black Fridays, so trust me when I say no one hated Black Friday more than me. The crowds, the desperation, the shameless embrace of conspicuous consumption. It was all very sad💧 and gross, and I'm glad that the convenience and flexibility of online shopping have pretty much killed ♈any desire anyone ever had to go line up outside of a store in the middle of the night.
Unfortunately, the rise of online shopping has had some less than desirable outcomes. Namely, Amazon employees wor𒉰king under such inhumane conditions that they have to pee in bottles to not get fired, but also, pre-ordering gaming hardware has become an absolute nightmare.
The Definition Of Insanity Is…
After years of battling the bots and online mobs for every single pre-order, I can confidently say that I'd much rather dr🔯ag my butt over to Target at 5am and stand there as long as I have to if it means getting the things I actually want. There’s nothing more soul-crushing than spamming the refresh button on a busted website, hoping something will happen and knowing deep down nothing ever will. The futility is maddening, and yet we all keep doing it because there is no other way.
Like a lot of things that suck, online pre-orders really took off during the pandemic. In the last five years I've tried (and often failed) to pre-order a PS5, Xbox Series X, graphics cards, trading cards, the Playdate, the Retro Pocket, several collector's editions, a dozen action figures, and one life-sized Pokemon plush tha🎃t shall remain unnamed, and it's been horrible and ꧙traumatizing every. single. time.
Last week I joined all of the other naive morons who had the audacity to think they could simply visit a website and pre-order the Switch 2, and it was just as much of a disaster as every other pre-order. Walmart, Target, and GameStop all advertised that pre-orders would be going live at midnight ET., and do you know what happened? That's rightꦉ, all their websites exploded.
My partner and I decided to divide and ꦫconquer this absurd game of fastest finger, so I lurked on Target’s website while she lurked on Best Buy’s. At the stroke of 9:01, I watched the pre-order button on Target light up. I clicked it and, surprise surprise, the Switch 2 was already sold out. By the time I got over to Walmart’s page, a whole 2.5 seconds later, it was sold out there too.
My partner somehow fared even worse on Best Buy’s site. She spent the next 30 minut✤es constantly refreshing the page, waiting for pre-orders to go live. She was still locked in when it finally popped, and despite spamming Add To Cart, she got put in a queue that eventually timed out and kicked her back to the home page.
I stayed on Target for another hour, unwilling to give up. The site would barely load, and when it did, ꦛall it would do is throw up error messages. I eventually got a Switch 2 in my cart, but I was still nearly 45 minutes away from success. I sat there pressing Place Order over, and over, and over, until it finally went through.
I’m one of the lucky ones. Unlike a lot of people, my Target pre-order hasn't been cancelled. According to the site, it’s possible my delivery will be delayed until June 10 or later, but you have to take what you can get. That's what you have to go thr🌟ough for the privilege of giving a store $500. Wha𒈔t have they done to us?
Ask For The Old Way, Which Is The Good Way
There's nothing fair about online pre-orders. It doesn't matter how early you get there, there's no actual line, and even if you do everything exactly right and click the button as fast as humanly possible, there's still a pretty good chance the boys are going to beat you to it. I don't know how long the online pre-orders actually lasted once you factor 🐎in all the technical issues, but it would definitely be measured in seconds.
I know it'🤡s horrible, but we have to return to in-person pre-orders. I hate giving GameStop any credit, but it sounds like its in-store pre-orders went incredibly smoothly. Each store posted the number of available pre-orders on the door the night before, people lined up whenever they wanted to, and when the 𝄹store opened, everyone who expected to pre-order got to pre-order. No bots, no mystery, just people waiting in a normal, organized line.
I hate the idea of sleeping on cold concrete to buy a toy, but at this point, I'd much prefer that to the torture of online pre-orders. Unless the retailers implement an actual fair and reliable queue system, one that filters out bots and ensures all orders are truly first come, first served, then we need to gꦜo back to waiting in line like the old days. Give me a line, give me a lottery, give me some actual hope, but don't give me this online charade.
- Brand
- Nintendo
- Operating System
- 🦂 Proprietary 🔥
- Storage
- 256GB internal /🧸 MicroSD
- Resolution
- 1080p (handheld) / 4K (docked) 🧔 😼
- App Store
- 🍰 Nintendo eShop 𝓀
- Wi-Fi
- Yes
