If you were in the market for a Nintendo Switch over the past year or so, you may have noticed a serious lack of inventory at online retailers. Switches experienced an unprecedented surge in demand in 2020. Just take a look at the Google Trends data:
Every year there is a huge spike in interest around the holidays. Great. Everyone knows this and, as a result, an appropriate number of switches can be manufactured to meet the demand.
This year is different though. With everyone staying inside due to the coronavirus, there was a huge need for indoor entertainment. Hence the huge spike in Nintendo Switch interest that occurred in April 2020 and then tapered off until the expected holiday spike of 2020. With no way to prepare for this sudden increase in demand, retailers ran out of stock very quickly.
Finally though, it seems that manufacturing is beginning to catch up. We have been keeping an eye on our Nintendo Switch In Stock Tracker.
The tracker monitors the availability of Nintendo Switches at Walmart, Target, GameStop, and B&H Photo Video. We have seen that restocks are happening much more frequently, and the product is going out of stock much more slowly. This indicates to us that it should soon be possible to find a Nintendo Switch available at just about any authorized retailer.
UPDATE (5/9/2021): Since writing this article, we have added tracking for Best Buy and Adorama.