Purchasing new games during the COVID-19 pandemic is a challenge. Even Amazon, an industry staple for video game pre-orders, is not immune from the pandemic's effects. Just recently, Amazon made the decision to no longer accept pre-orders for the majority of upcoming video games and hardware. While there are a handful of games that continue to have their pre-orders listed, many, many more are now listed as "Currently unavailable" on Amazon's marketplace.
While Amazon hasn't made any official comment regarding the sudden shift, the justification for the decision is readily apparent. The are several major reasons for the chance. Firstly, over the past months, Amazon shipping has heavily prioritized essential items. Video games simply don't deserve the priority that other items Amazon is selling do - items that people need to live and stay healthy during the pandemic.
Secondly, and this has nothing to do with Amazon itself, but video game manufacturing and shipping is also in shambles. Manufacturing plants for retail boxes are commonly shut down or running at low capacity. Then shipping efforts to get those games to retailers have also been delayed or placed on hold. If Amazon can't reliably say it's receiving copies of a game by a specific date, it doesn't make sense to put it up for pre-order.
Thirdly, Amazon's own delivery services aren't running to full capacity. 2-day shipping is a logistical effort that isn't necessarily manageable during the current pandemic. Even if Amazon had enough copies of each video game for pre-orderers on release date, Amazon may not be able to get them to buyers in a reasonable amount of time.
For the time being, Amazon does still have pre-orders for specific games available. The Last of Us 2, Marvel's Avengers, and even Cyberpunk 2077 still have pre-orders available. It isn't clear why these games and not others remain pre-orderable. However, it does lend hope that other game pre-orders will open once Amazon is more confident in its ability to get them into buyers' hands near release day.
It's unclear how this status quo will last. It's entirely possible that within another month, Amazon will be opening pre-orders for all upcoming games once more. It's also possible that things may be like this for a while. It could even stretch through to the launch of both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X this holiday season. That's a challenging thing to consider, but given the persistence of the pandemic and everyone's effort to remain safe and healthy, launch day Amazon video game delivery just isn't a priority.