'Zelda: Ocarina of Time' Fans Devastated by Weeklong Shipping Delays

Published Nov 5, 2026, 10:55 AM EST Elijah is a freelance news writer at Polygon. He was an associate editor at The A.V. Club and Paste, and has been featured in outlets like Game Informer, Fanbyte, Unwinnable, and more. He loves media in all forms, from fighting games and horror flicks to slow cinema and visual novels. He's from the Greater Boston area. Amazon is not in many players' good graces at the moment A screenshot from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.Image: Nintendo Sign in to your Polygon.com account Nintendo’s remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time releases today, and its first reviews are glowing, with critics calling it a near-flawless recreation of one of the best games ever made. Along with modernizing the classic game's controls and visuals, the remake fixes one of the most hated video game levels of all time: the Water Temple. Unfortunately, all that praise is probably just rubbing salt in the wound for many who pre-ordered the physical version on Amazon. Zelda fans have taken to social media to complain about lengthy shipping delays. Many buyers won’t get their copies until after the weekend, and in some cases delivery will be a full week later than initially promised. Several users said they’ve run into similar problems pre-ordering games through Amazon in the past. Why did these delays happen? Amazon’s customer service account waded into the carnage, but didn’t provide much help. “You lying scumbags,” wrote an angry buyer. “I pre-ordered this nearly a month ago. It was promised to me at point of order that it would arrive on day of release. FOUR DAY DELAY?!?” The Help page responded to several complaints on X, but the explanations for the delays were vague. “Hello! We understand the frustration caused by your order being delayed,” the Amazon Help account replied. “While we do our best to predict when products are available for dispatch, unforeseen changes in obtaining the item can occur.” The threat of shipping delays is one of the main reasons many buyers are embracing the convenience of digital purchases. Nintendo sales data shows that 61.5% of software sales from April to June were digital, a 2.2% increase from last year. While Nintendo said last month that the company plans to keep supporting physical game releases for the foreseeable future, the majority of Switch 2 releases aren't on traditional game cartridges. Instead of having the game installed, the physical components act as a key that lets the user download the game from Nintendo’s servers. Not only does this take up extra space on the Switch 2’s hard drive, but it also means these game cards face the same preservation problems as other forms of digital media. If Nintendo were ever to shut down the servers that let users download those Switch 2 games, they would become completely inaccessible. With PlayStation's recent announcement that it's backing away from producing physical discs altogether, it's particularly disappointing that Nintendo has already cut the legs out from under the Switch 2's game cards.