It might be another week until we can start playing the Ocarina of Time remake on them, but The Legend of Zelda’s 40th anniversary Switch 2 consoles are being released today. Unfortunately, you’re not guaranteed one, even if you secured and paid for a pre-order, with one major retailer waiting until the day before release to cancel pre-orders en masse.
Walmart Cancels Zelda Switch 2 Pre-Orders
That retailer is Walmart. Reports of canceled pre-orders started yesterday and quickly gathered momentum as more and more customers who ordered the limited edition console through Walmart received the same email. The email informs them that the console is out of stock, which, while true, shouldn’t be a message you receive for a product you secured through pre-order almost two months earlier.
If you haven’t received a cancelation email yet, you, unfortunately, still might not be safe, with emails seemingly still going out. “I battled bots and resellers to secure an Ocarina of Time Switch 2, and Walmart canceled my order an hour ago,” one angry customer shared on Twitter in a post that went up less than three hours ago.
“Not only did they cancel it the day before delivery, they were selling them in stores before its official release date,” another customer writes. That’s the additional, somewhat confusing and potentially suspect, layer to all of this. While removed now, as cancelation emails were being sent out, Kotaku reported that the console was in stock and available to buy through Walmart’s website, but for $700, almost $200 more than its MSRP.
Finding A Replacement Will Be Hard, But Not Impossible
Some who have received the email have noted that, as a make-good for the mistake, they’ve been offered $10 in store credit on a future purchase. Not really much comfort to those who previously thought they would be receiving a console they likely had to battle for to secure a pre-order, and now one they will likely never get with stock of it selling out a long time ago.
There is a chance that those who had their pre-orders canceled can find the console in stock somewhere today. Even after pre-orders of sought-after items like this sell out almost immediately, they tend to get restocked on release day, often due to, somewhat ironically in this instance, canceled pre-orders getting relisted.
The release of the Ocarina of Time remake will follow the anniversary Switch 2’s launch in exactly one week on November 5. There are now fears that Walmart will cancel pre-orders for that too. Stock of the game itself isn’t nearly as limited as the Zelda console, but if Walmart had promised me one of the limited-edition copies with a textured foil cover, I’d be a little worried right now.
- Released
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November 5, 2026
- ESRB
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Everyone 10+ / Animated Blood, Fantasy Violence
- Developer(s)
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Nintendo
- Publisher(s)
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Nintendo
