Contents
The Offer
Direct links to offers below contain our affiliate link
- It’s currently possible to preorder the Nintendo Switch – OLED Model – The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Edition for $359.99 (list price) at:
Our Verdict
Lots of people think this is going to sell out. I don’t really know enough about that market to agree or disagree but if you want one pre-ordering might make sense.
Since it is still available at all the links, I am guessing this is not a super hot item. Time for me to cancel.
Im just going to patiently wait for the switch 2. Im not entirely sure how much this will sell for in the future, but with the game not being included it’s kinda dumb.
As a Zelda fan who’s experienced Nintendo’s multiple iterations of Zelda-skinned gold console FOMO, I’m gonna pass.
Since this doesn’t include the game I don’t see these going for much over MSRP. Preordered a couple hoping I’m proven wrong.
I have this dumb $400 best buy gift card i want to get rid of. Unfortunately this doesn’t look like it will sell out let alone go for retail price plus tax. I don’t even want to make extra money. Just swap gift card for cash. I guess ill just wait to use the gift card for Switch 2
Nintendo never ceases to amaze me for how effectively they churn old shitty hardware to run their crappy graphical interface games to make profits. I don’t get the hype and nostalgia… maybe we all start using windows 95 on Pentium processors again for kicks too
Yeah I think they decided back with the Nintendo 64 that trying to have cutting edge hardware with thin margins just wasn’t worth being in the rat race for. Instead they make fun games with modest hardware that can have fat margins on and sell to people who just want to have casual fun on at lower prices.
I am a card carrying nerd, and so I am contractually obligated to add nuance to this topic.
Nintendo’s primary concern around the N64 and GameCube generations was piracy. Using standard CD’s would have made piracy much easier, and so for both the N64 and the GameCube, they opted for non-standard game mediums. That’s what really held them back in both generations.
I say this because the N64 and the GameCube were technically more powerful than their primary competition i.e. the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 from a hardware perspective.
For instance, the N64 cartridges could only hold 64 mb of data. Compare that to the PS1 disks, which could hold up to 660 mb each.
https://www.quora.com/How-powerful-was-the-Nintendo-64-when-it-came-out-during-its-generation#:~:text=N64%20was%20very%20powerful%20console,%2C%20BUT%20because%20of%20cartridges%E2%80%A6.
For a specific example, Final Fantasy 7, one of the most popular PS1 games of that generation and the first game in that franchise to abandon Nintendo in favor of Playstation, still took 3 disks to fit on that console. It would have literally taken dozens of cartridges to fit on the N64. It just wasn’t practical at all.
You saw a similar issue with the GameCube, where they used mini-disks and thus missed out on a lot of critical 3rd party games.
After the relative commercial failure of the GameCube, the lesson Nintendo internalized to themselves was close to what you said, where they really thought that they cannot compete on hardcore games, and should pivot towards the casual market. They made a bazillion dollars on the Wii because no one else was really capitalizing on that market at the time, and the rest is history.
So you’re correct in general that Nintendo now focuses on the casual market and less pricey hardware, but it wasn’t really a pivot they made in the N64 era. Moreso the Wii era.
Anyone who carries a card is already a nerd to begin with. Myself included. Rock on!
Well, even the GameCube wasn’t that advanced at the time and opted to compete at a more competitive price instead of trying to offer something bleeding edge. It had a handle, it was trying to be a quasi compact, “fun” almost conceivably portable console that contrasted with the enormous Xbox and PS2 at the time. The N64 absolutely burned Nintendo with ultra high hardware costs initially and they moved away from the arms race after
The GameCube had a much better CPU than the PS2 (485 MHz processor vs 295 MHz) and a slightly better GPU. It was definitively the stronger console, albeit they wound up not being able to make that a major selling point because they refused to let go of the piracy concerns. It’s hard to overstate how much the mini disk thing held them back.
I’m not sure if the whole turning the GameCube into a lunchbox thing was an attempt to appeal to casual gamers, or just an attempt to give it a small portability advantage vs its competitors. If they were clearly going for the former, then I don’t see why they would give it such strong hardware.
The much clearer jump to casual gamers came with the Wii, where they only increased the power of the hardware by 50% over the GameCube, while the PS3 was 3500% stronger than the PS2. They went from having stronger hardware than their competitors, to dramatically weaker hardware in every generation since the Wii era, to today. And you see it from the sales, Nintendo went after casuals as hard as possible in that generation and its reflected in the demographics that bought it vs the gamecube.
Give me windows xp and we’ve got a deal.
Pre-ordered mine from Bestbuy and Target. One for use, one for collection.
Just because I don’t get it, why is it worth dropping $400 on one if you already have a Switch vs. spending $10 for a knockoff skin that will inevitably come out?
this is the correct answer
A collector is not going to be content with knockoffs and skins to make consoles look like a limited edition.
Sure, but if it’s a collector item why would you take the first one out of the box and use it diminishing it’s mint condition value when you already have a perfectly good Switch? If it’s visually you NEED that Zelda look to complete your man cave, is it really worth $400 to have the original vs. the knockoff? Like are your friends going to point out it’s a fake and take your Nerd card or something? Basically, I feel you need non-collectors to want this. I just have trouble believing there’s big enough a group of console collectors to make this go nuclear when seemingly most of the retailers are getting them. Anybody know how limited the run is?
For non-collectors, is it purely that there’s a lot of demand to upgrade from regular to OLED and if you’re going to pull the trigger, this is the model?
“Let’s reskin it, paint it a slightly different color, and then watch customers go crazy trying to buy one for full MSRP” – Nintendo 🍿🍿🍿
Actually $10 over MSRP of the regular OLED version.
Still better than Meta raising the price of a 2 year old Oculus Quest 2 by $100 while making absolutely zero changes to it.
Shouldnt make a difference, no need to buy that garbage in the first place
“I don’t enjoy a certain console” != “Must be garbage”
I don’t enjoy anything meta makes or what they stand for because they are garbage
Just buy a Steam Deck instead and get a vastly larger game catalog plus emulators plus you’ll probably be able to play the new Zelda on it eventually too – only downside is losing the OLED screen I guess?
Will definitely sell out and get scalped. Welcome surprise and glad I got the pre-order in.
This doesn’t come with the game, FYI.
it comes with the game but you need to buy the game for an extra $70 lol