BODY: Japan's Zelda 40th anniversary hardware push has produced its strangest footnote yet: at HMV&BOOKS online, the commemorative Switch 2 costs exactly one yen more than it does anywhere else.
GAME Watch reports that HMV&BOOKS online has opened preorders for the Nintendo Switch 2 (Japanese-language / domestic-use only) The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition, shipping October 29. The console carries artwork drawn from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the Switch 2 remake Nintendo detailed at its September 8 Direct — the one where you can play the ocarina by humming into the system's microphone.
HMV is listing two SKUs: the console on its own, and a bundle pairing it with a physical copy of Ocarina of Time. Most retailers have the hardware at ¥62,980. HMV's price is ¥62,981, and the retailer's explanation is refreshingly unglamorous — its product registration system simply won't accept the intended figure, so the listing rounds up by a single yen.
The "Japanese-language, domestic-use only" label is the detail international readers should note. It marks the region- and language-locked SKU Nintendo created for the home market, sold well below the multi-language model to keep a weak yen from turning Japanese retail into a global export arbitrage. It is not a machine that will do much for a buyer outside Japan, anniversary shell or not.
The insider take
That HMV — a music and book chain — is a meaningful distribution channel for a Nintendo console tells you how Japanese hardware allocation actually works. Nintendo spreads limited stock across Amazon, Rakuten Books, Yodobashi, Tsutaya, convenience-store chains and, yes, CD shops, precisely so no single storefront becomes the scalper chokepoint. Buyers here have learned to track store-by-store preorder roundups the way one tracks concert ticket lotteries, and each retailer sweetens its allocation with exclusive bonuses — Rakuten Books is shipping a Link diorama stand with its Ocarina preorders. Against that backdrop, a ¥1 markup isn't a scandal; it's the cost of a lane that might actually have stock. Anyone who has refreshed a My Nintendo Store lottery page will happily pay it.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).