GameStop can’t handle your Amiibo cravings.
The retailer’s website has struggled to load all Thursday afternoon as fans of the Nintendo interactive toys pummel it looking to buy new dolls. GameStop began taking preorders for characters like Ness, Wario, and Pac-Man today, and people tried loading up GameStop.com to get theirs. Unfortunately, the company’s servers couldn’t handle the load. This prompted the game seller to limit the sales of new Amiibos to its brick-and-mortar locations.
GameStop posted the following statement to its website:
“Due to very strong demand for the newest wave of Nintendo’s amiibo figures, GameStop is experiencing some technical issues with our website.
At this time, we are accepting preorders of Amiibos in stores only while we resolve these issues.
We are working aggressively to resolve the technical issues as quickly as possible and expect it to be back online shortly.”
The company had previously announced that it would accept preorders first at its stores, and this prompted fans to lineup at GameStop locations around the country.
Here’s a store in San Francisco (yes, these are all people waiting for Amiibos):
https://twitter.com/kobunheat/status/583704529717211136
This in-store demand was enough to temporarily crash GameStop’s own point-of-service sales system. And despite showing up early and waiting in line, most people still failed to pick up certain Amiibos.
At this point, the latest news is that the Amiibos for Lucina and Robin, two Fire Emblem characters, are sold out nationwide. Other people failed to secure Wario.
While this seems like a nightmare for fans, Nintendo doesn’t seem to hate it. It has celebrated the incredibly high demand for the Amiibos along with many of its other products.