Can't wait for the site to go down 30 seconds in, Nintendo to promise they'll have the site back up and running for hours, and ultimately for Nintendo to give up again.

At least they had the sense to limit orders to 1 per account this time. Can't imagine why they thought a limit of 2 was appropriate last time.

Of course, I don't understand why these orders are limited at all considering NONE of the SE content will be mailed out until months after launch. You'd think they could manufacturer to order.

Yeah, limiting the orders makes no sense.  It feeds into scalping but Nintendo gets no additional cut from that, only the original purchase price, so there is no benefit for them to encourage it.

Maybe they figure having a limited edition will encourage day one sales but then it should still be an open pre-order.  Personally I have enough of a backlog that I'm not going to get this game day one, but I am interested in it.  A special edition could in theory encourage me to pre-order but only if I can ensure a copy and it's an easy process.  I'm not even going to try because of how things have gone before and if I did try and didn't get it that wouldn't necessarily mean I would buy the regular version on release day.  I would probably go back to it being a purchase at a later date.  But a special edition that's easy to obtain might rope me in.  That strategy has worked in the past.

Meanwhile, here's Nintendo's REAL customer base:

https://gonintendo.com/contents/5845-scalpers-selling-xenoblade-chronicles-3-special-edition-for-300

EDIT: FINALLY got an order to go through, after trying the site on various devices for the last 6 or so hours. Nintendo, it doesn't need to BE this way... =_=

Oh man! Saw this news item last night and totally forgot about it happening today. Well, off to the Waiting Room to see what happens, I guess.

After posting that and waiting I did get through. Everything seemed to be working and logged in my account information and entered all the shipping and payment info and then got a message that the item was out of stock. Went back to the site and now there is no waiting room and it just shows the item out of stock. Wonder if I just missed out on one of the final copies since it wasn't saying I was out of stock until after I tried to make the payment.

Well, I wonder if that will be that or if there will be special editions made available after the game releases...

You should keep an eye on the store, at least for the rest of the day. The availability was shifting between In & and Out of stock all day. Nintendo might have been trying to spread out the stock by releasing it in batches.

I have checked it a few times since. There's been no change so far.

I was able to get my order through for this "stupid edition" and now I feel relived that I have secured the $30+ art book for my collection.

Since the Special Edition stuff won't be shipped until way later in the year, I do wonder why this stuff isn't made to order, as suggested above. Or maybe why there isn't an email-based invite system, similar to how Steam Deck reservations are handled. I get that logistics are hard and there's an expectation for immediate availability and delivery of goods. But these are collectors editions for (ideally) fans. I have never understood why there isn't a made-to-order queue (especially since Nintendo went with a direct-sale route) or some staggered batches of invitations to purchase.

These day-one sale frenzies and multi-hour virtual queue times just feel like a net-negative. The only conclusion I can think of is that some management at a high level truly believes that the noise from pre-order frustrations travels farther and faster than any Nintendo ad dollar and is a net-positive in getting the name of the product on the minds of many and sometimes unlikely people.

I don't know how even Nintendo could think that associating a new game with frustration and arbitrary tedium was a good marketing move. I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I can honestly say that I didn't have nearly this much trouble or have to invest this much time and energy into getting my PS5, and that was a dedicated month-long endeavor. When it looked like I wasn't going to get this silly little Special Edition, I was DONE with Xenoblade 3 in general, just because I would always associate the game with this bullshit.

Sooner or later, Nintendo's love of using scalpers to artificially increase demand for their games is going to backfire on them. At least, one can hope it will. It doesn't need to be this way.

You're overthinking this if you believe this is part of some elaborate scheme. It's far simpler than that. Nintendo doesn't like excess. Full stop. It makes a set amount of a thing for an exact amount of profit then it moves on. Occasionally, it'll throw us a bone like that extra batch of NES Classic Editions. At the end of the day, Nintendo doesn't want to be left holding the bag.

Nintendo isn't doing this either. The audience for special editions is small. There's nothing to backfire. This special edition is what, $30 USD more than the standard version. With economies of scale, like $25 of that is profit. Cool, profit achievement unlocked. Nintendo will keep doing this because it isn't as if people will stop buying its special editions. Not defending this, just trying to be pragmatic. When there are no consequences, there's no reason to change.