Character from Xenoblade Chronicles 3 holding a weapon.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s Special Edition Preorders Are Being Sold for Outrageous Prices by Scalpers


Stephanie is a writer at VGKAMI and a long-time lover of video games—specifically JRPGs. Anything in the fantasy genre is her jam, and she vows to bring back The Legend of Dragoon one day. Stephanie has also worked as an editor at TheGamer and published features for NME.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Special Edition preorders finally went live earlier today on June 30. Unfortunately, Nintendo’s insistence on selling exclusively from their online store and the participation of scalpers interfered with people’s ability to reserve their game and bonus items.

On June 22, Nintendo showcased a Direct specific to Xenoblade Chronicles 3. The showcase focused on numerous aspects of the game including main characters, gameplay, abilities, classes, and even the expansion pass. You can read more about the details for this upcoming JRPG here.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 will launch later this month on July 29. Today, pre-orders for the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Special Edition went live, and it didn’t exactly go as planned. The Special Edition costs $89.99, and it comes with a steel bookcase and an art book. The preorders were exclusive to Nintendo’s online store, and that seemed to cause some problems.

Nintendo error screen on page that sells Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Special Edition preorders.

Though plenty of people attempted to lock down their pre-orders, Nintendo’s site underwent widespread outages. Even at this time of writing, a while after pre-orders had gone live, an error message appears on the web page dedicated to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 pre-orders. The message reads, “We have a lot of visitors right now. Hang in there… we will be with you soon!” This happened because the game was only being sold in one place, and many people were attempting to order at the same time.

What’s worse is that, like usual, scalpers had to join the party. Not only did numerous fans not get the Special Edition preorder they were hoping for, but many of them fell into the hands of scalpers who are now selling them on third-party sites. At the time of this writing, preorders of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Special Edition are being sold for up to $350 dollars on eBay.