BODY: If you've been refreshing Japanese retail pages hoping for a crack at the most coveted Nintendo accessory of the autumn, October 21 was your moment. Rakuten Books reopened preorders for the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller: The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition at around 4:30 PM JST — and it was still showing stock across multiple configurations.
The controller, which ships October 29, carries the standard Pro Controller price of ¥9,980 and bundles a display stand, a telling detail: Nintendo is explicitly pitching this as a shelf piece as much as a peripheral. It marks four decades since the original The Legend of Zelda arrived on the Famicom Disk System in February 1986.
Rakuten Books listed it in several forms. Beyond the standalone controller, shoppers found a two-piece set pairing it with a carrying case, and a three-piece set adding a Nintendo Switch 2 console itself. Bundle prices ran from roughly ¥11,746 up to ¥20,747 depending on configuration.
One caveat buyers should read carefully: Rakuten Books is not accepting cancellations or returns initiated by the customer. And as the original report notes, stock levels shift in real time — a listing that's live when you open the page may be closed by the time you reach checkout.
The insider take
That no-cancellations clause isn't customer-hostile boilerplate — it's an anti-scalper mechanism, and it's become standard practice at Japanese retailers after the Switch 2 launch chaos. The playbook here is familiar to anyone who shops Japanese electronics: Nintendo's own My Nintendo Store runs 抽選 (lottery) sales for high-demand items, while third-party retailers like Rakuten Books, Amazon JP, and Yodobashi do surprise restocks with no advance notice. The bundled sets are the other half of the strategy. Pairing a hot controller with a console or pouch — 抱き合わせ販売, "tie-in selling" — moves slower inventory and makes bulk flipping less profitable. For overseas fans, the practical hurdle isn't the price but the proxy: Rakuten Books ships domestically only, so you'll need a forwarding service, and resale listings on Mercari will almost certainly carry a markup before the week is out.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).