As I write this, I’m in an Uber on my way to the airport to fly to Los Angeles for Summer Game Fest. Odds are, there wasn’t really going to be a good window for me to use my Switch 2 if it had showed up on time, but this doesn’t change my disappointment that it still has not arrived at my home in New York City. I would probably not have a ton of time to ride around Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 while I sat on my plane, nor play Mario Kart World locally with a bunch of friends at the event. But dammit, it sure would have been nice to have the option. Sadly, my Switch 2 is arriving fashionably late, and I’m definitely not the only person suffering from a delayed shipment.
The Switch 2 is the first console I’ve ever pre-ordered online. Before I moved to New York City, I lived in a small Georgia town where I could reliably get a console if I pre-ordered it at my local GameStop. Despite this, I do have vivid memories from 2005, of waiting too long to try to get an Xbox 360 and being pushed into the later shipments that my store would receive. Although the system was released in November, my family didn’t get to experience the next generation of video games until January. That wait was so excruciating that I swore I’d never get put on a waiting list again. When the PS4, Vita, and PS5 came out, I had those things on lock as soon as pre-orders went live, because there weren’t enough hardcore nerds in my small town that the store would run out of supply if I made sure to get in there early.
I had been conditioned to expect this approach not to work now that I live in a big city. I still don’t have a go-to game store in NYC, having mostly swapped to digital downloads given I have usable download speeds in my apartment. With millions of people living in the city and me being stuck at my desk until work hours were over each day, I figured that if I wanted a chance in hell of even getting a launch window Switch 2, I would need to try online. Either that, or I would end up waiting in long lines on launch night, hoping that some store had extra systems, before going home empty-handed and broken-hearted. At least, that was what living in a small town had conditioned me to think. Instead, I’m now hearing from all the people who secured systems in stores last night, and wishing I had toughed out a midnight release instead of waiting for Target to get around to shipping.
In the grand scheme of things, waiting a week for a system I probably wouldn’t have had much time to play on anyway isn’t that big of a deal. But damn, how many times can I see people posting clips doing sick tricks as the cow in Mario Kart World before I fall to my knees, wishing I could be where the people are? Yeah, I’ll have a hectic work week in front of me, covering the rest of the video game industry, so I will have distractions. But what if I were also smooching Kerry Eurodyne in tabletop mode on my flight right now? There are Dozens of Us refreshing our shipping status pages, waiting for someone in a warehouse to send that tiny red box to a warm and loving home.
To all of you who are waiting for your Switch 2 to show up, suffering through all the cool pics and clips from your friends who lucked out: I see you. I hear you. I’m holding space for you. May we see each other on the Mario Kart track in the coming days.