With the increasingly-serious spread of the novel coronavirus encouraging more people to stay home, there’s been an increase in demand for Nintendo’s weird fitness-RPGRing Fit Adventure as an alternative to going to the gym. So much so, in fact, that the game is now virtually impossible to find in the Americas.
This probably won’t be too surprising for many, given how things have progressed with the disease known as COVID-19. The situation has gotten to the point where entire countries are on lockdown to curb the pandemic and governments are calling for people to maintain as much distance between one another as possible. More than that, though, it’s been expected that the growing number of quarantines would have a major effect on the availability of the Nintendo Switch and other electronic products largely manufactured in China, where the coronavirus originated and hit hardest so far.
And now, in Ring Fit Adventure’s case, that’s become a reality. Polygon reports that the game has pretty much disappeared from all major retailers in the US, with chains like GameStop and Best Buy stating that they do not currently have the game available at any store located within 100 miles of several of the country’s most populated cities.
According to Polygon, this extends to all major online stores across the US and Canada. This was further corroborated by Nintendo itself, which confirmed the shortages in a statement to the site that read, “The Ring Fit Adventure game is selling out at various retail locations in the Americas. We are working to provide more units as soon as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.”
What Nintendo didn’t state, though, was whether the shortages is primarily due to concerns over coronavirus, but it’s clear that the disease, at the very least, has had a sizable part in it. In China alone, the demand for cheap at-home exercise solutions has led to a huge spike in sales for Ring Fit Adventure, to the point that re-sellers who bought the game from overseas (as it has yet to officially release in China) have been able to sell it for upwards of $250.
Whatever the case, it’s looking like, for the time being, consumers are either going to have to turn to overpriced third-party sales on sites like eBay or something else to exercise at home. Unless Nintendo is able to somehow increase production and distribution amid the growing constraints of the coronavirus pandemic, the closest many people will be able to get to Ring Fit Adventure for cheap is through Super Smash Bros Ultimate’s Spirit Board.
Ring Fit Adventure is available on the Switch.
Source: Polygon
