Welcome to the TechMeme right home for Monday, June 30th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. Weird beef between Nintendo and Amazon. Is Apple going to make a cheap MacBook with an iPhone chip inside? OpenAI claps back at Meta, the AI avatar startup. And for the first time in a decade, Spotify has changed up the

Discover Weekly playlist. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.

This is crazy. Still don't have a Nintendo Switch 2 yet? Well, it's gotten even harder to procure one,

because folks are reporting that Nintendo has pulled all of its products from Amazon's U.S.

site after noticing third-party merchants were selling games in the U.S. at prices below Nintendo's rates.

Quoting Bloomberg,

Enterprising sellers were buying Nintendo products in bulk in Southeast Asia and exporting

them to the U.S., said the person who requested anonymity to discuss confidential information.

Nintendo product listings started disappearing from Amazon's U.S. site last year, gaming

news outlets reported at the time.

The listings had previously appeared as sold by Amazon, which typically

denotes merchandise the online retailer buys directly from brands. Some Nintendo products

remained on the site, but they were listed by independent merchants who sell their goods

on Amazon's sprawling online marketplace. When Nintendo released the hotly anticipated Switch 2 this month,

Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and GameStop all stocked

the console in their U.S. stores. Amazon is selling the switch two in foreign markets,

including Canada, Japan, and the UK, but the company's U.S. customers have been out of luck,

with some taking to social media to wonder when the world's largest online retailer might

have it in stock. The U.S. accounts for about

two-thirds of Amazon's sales, end quote. Nintendo isn't the first major company to clash with Amazon

over third-party seller practices. For years, big brands have criticized Amazon for failing to

rein in unauthorized sellers and counterfeit goods. Some have even pulled

...