Most stores keep an allotment for launch day in-srore purchases.  Foot traffic is important to brick and mortar stores and they like to take advantage of the traffic generated by hardware launches.

Spawn Wave Media on youtube reported a few days ago that Gamestop was getting more Switches for launch, so I guess Nintendo did ramp up the production. Something along the line they  are getting their initial allotment early next week and another one a day before launch.

Here is the link.

That makes me wonder what the actual total allotment of Switch consoles is going to be for the initial launch period in March.  I think people estimated around 2m but it seems like it's going to be more than that now due to demand.

We got ours at work yesterday (Target) 30 so far with at least 5 more on the way. Not bad considering we didn't do in store pre-orders.

Artificial scarcity unconfirmed

Or they wanted to ride that sweet spot where there's scarity but scalpers aren't able to make tons of money exploiting it.

I was going to mention this. If WalMart is getting a new allotment it lines up with gamestop getting more stock too. I imagine there will be more stock at Amazon and target as well.

If gamestops 500k number in addtion to spurges numbers are even in the ballpark of correct the Switch could end up doing close to 1m on launch day in US.

EDIT: I did some quick calculations based on the info we have. Most stores from diffrent retail chains seem so have gotten around 30 units with the initial shipment. Some seem to have gotten more, but I'm taking 30 as an average.

For WalMart that means: 5332 times 30 = 160k (Thanks Spurge)

For Gamestop: 4434 times 30 = 133k (Not sure how they get to the 500k number, if it was in-store that would make 122 units per store, but I'm not sure how online is treated at gamestop. I imagine seperate allocations that either go straight from the warehouse to your doorstep or to your store for pick-up? Who knows how much of their stock was allocated to online.)

Target: 1795 times 30 = 54k

That totals to about 350k. Without online, without Amazon and without the new shipment that seems to be coming in. I'd say around 600k launch shipment is on lock, beyond that it's hard to say.

Or the other way around? Reports have indicated that the launch shipment was already more or less sold through? But there are obviously more units left to distribute.

I think he's being sarcastic?  Or I hope so?  Cause this evidences that Nintendo is indeed trying to increase shipments to meet demand.

I remember when the Wii launched, and there was a leak telling us how many Wii's every Target got. A similar leak would be really useful around now.....