Best Buy to Host Midnight Launch for Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Anticipation for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake is running high, and Nintendo's plans to mark the series '40th anniversary have only fueled it. The company announced a commemorative Switch 2 system and a matching Pro Controller, but anyone who tried to buy either one knows how rough it has been.

Stock vanished fast, and the only options left were resale listings at scalper prices. There is now a way around that. Best Buy has confirmed it will hold a midnight launch for Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake at select stores. Not every location will take part, so keep checking whether yours is one of them.

Best Buy's midnight launch offers a retail-price shot, though store setups vary.

Starting at midnight Eastern Time on Thursday, November 5, customers who pre-ordered the game through the retailer can head in and pick up their copy as the release begins. The midnight event isn't just for game pickups, though. Best Buy is also planning to have the 40th-anniversary Switch 2 system and the Pro Controller in limited quantities.

If you didn't pre-order the hardware and still want it, showing up at one of these Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake midnight launches might be your best shot at paying normal retail price instead of an inflated resale price. What is still unclear is how each store will organize things.

Some may run separate lines for pre-order pickups and people looking to buy the system or controller, while others might handle everyone in a single line. During the launch of Nintendo's latest console, Best Buy used multiple lines, and the setup produced an odd result.

One shopper stood in the pre-order line while a friend with no pre-orders at all walked up in the regular line, showed an employee what he wanted, paid, and left before the first shopper reached the counter. Since every store will handle it differently, your experience could go either way.

Whether you chase the system, the controller, or just Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake, this is your best chance to get in without dealing with a reseller.

Pre-order from the retailer and pick up at midnight for the simplest route, and try for the commemorative gear at the same visit; it's worth the effort. If you do go, leave the flipping to someone else and buy only what you plan to keep. It is the holiday season, so picking one up as a gift is understandable, but buying a system purely to resell it only keeps the cycle going for the next person.

That covers Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake and the commemorative gear. The second story is bigger and affects Nintendo, PlayStation, and XBOX alike. Circana, the firm that tracks physical game and console sales in the United States, released its latest figures, and they point to an under-noticed problem.

In August, the Nintendo Switch 2 topped the charts as the bestselling system, both in units and in dollars. That's worth noting, because PlayStation 5 has held the top spot for a long stretch, especially in dollar terms. The reason is simple math. After Sony raised its prices, a console sold at $700 or $800 only needs one sale to match two sales of a $450 system.

Still, monthly rankings like this tend to swing back and forth, so they don't tell the whole story. There is a caveat on timing. Those figures cover August, the month before Nintendo raised the console price from $450 to $500. The increase isn't enormous, and a release like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake should soften it for buyers, but it still arrives as shoppers are already stretched.

Beyond Switch 2’s August win, overall console hardware sales hit a troubling low.

The real headline is something else. Overall hardware sales for August 2026 were the lowest the industry has seen since 2013. Think about that for a second: the entire console business, across every manufacturer, sold less hardware than in any August in over a decade. In 2013, the Wii U was struggling, and PlayStation and XBOX were in the middle of a generational handoff.

That is a rough comparison, and it is not where anyone expects to be at this stage of the current cycle, when these systems should be hitting their stride. This is not a one-off either. Individual companies have seen it too. Earlier this year, Circana's data showed PlayStation posting some of its weakest hardware sales in a while, around May.

Software is a different story, with sales holding up fairly well and appearing to rise compared to last year, but hardware sales tell a much weaker story. With prices climbing again and again, it is fair to wonder whether people's wallets have hit a breaking point.

There is a bright spot coming. Grand Theft Auto 6 is set to give both PlayStation 5 and XBOX Series consoles a major lift. XBOX Series hardware could even have a decent month around its release, likely because some buyers will not be able to find a PlayStation 5 in stock.

Whatever the reason, both platforms should sell well this holiday season.

Meanwhile, Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake gives Nintendo its own holiday draw. That boost won't last forever, though. The XBOX Series X is still expensive, and so is Sony's flagship console. The Pro model isn't in stores right now, and if you could find one, it would cost $900. Console prices are nearing the limit of what people will pay, and nothing suggests relief is coming.

If anything, things look set to get worse once the next generation arrives. You might expect older systems to get cheaper once new ones arrive, but that hasn't been the case lately. Chips are not getting easier to source, and neither are RAM and memory at prices that would let Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo cut existing hardware costs.

Even the original Switch remains pricey as a new purchase. Sure, you can find one used, but a new full-size model should have been cleared out at $150 or $200 by now, and it is nowhere near that. What stands out most is how little attention the Circana numbers are getting. People rarely ask whether the market has hit a saturation point, not because they've lost interest, but because they cannot afford the hardware.

And the next generation will cost more than what is on shelves now. One estimate puts base systems around $1,200, which is probably best-case. With older consoles not dropping in price either, it is hard to see where this goes. Nobody has a clear answer, and the end of 2026 will probably look fine thanks to Grand Theft Auto 6. Take that game out of the holiday lineup, though, and the picture changes.

Without GTA 6, this year’s other releases struggle to justify the price of pricey consoles.

It is worth asking who is buying a PlayStation 5 right now for Marvel's Wolverine, a game that got a mixed reception, or who is picking up an XBOX Series X at $700 or more after passing on it at $500. Gears of War: E-Day is a solid release with fun multiplayer, but it's a tough sell as a standalone game, especially when many players already have it through Game Pass.

Put together, the picture is mixed. Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake gives Nintendo a strong finish to the year, and the retailer's midnight launch gives you a decent shot at the 40th anniversary system and the Pro Controller without paying a reseller. The wider market is harder to feel good about.

Grand Theft Auto 6 will keep PlayStation and XBOX busy through the holidays, but if prices keep rising while hardware sales keep falling, the industry will have a lot to sort out once the holiday rush is over. Until then, the best move is to check your local store for details on the Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake midnight launch and plan around it.