Nintendo Co. Ltd. President Shuntaro Furukawa has revealed why fans shouldn’t have to worry about any supply issues with the Switch 2.
Speaking to investors in the latest financial call, Furukawa was asked if they would be able to deliver enough units of the Switch 2 at launch. The investor asking actually cited an earlier statement from Furukawa, that they want to get stock ready at launch to counter resellers.
Here’s what Furukawa said in response:
“Regarding the supply of the successor to Nintendo Switch, we cannot give a specific answer, as we have not yet announced the timing of the launch. However, currently there is no semiconductor shortage like we saw up until 2022, so we are not anticipating the supply of semiconductor components to be a major issue when we launch the successor to Nintendo Switch.”
As you may or may not remember, the tech industry at large was harmed by the sudden drop in semiconductor supplies in 2022, matching certain phases in the pandemic were even the shipping and manufacturing industries were affected worldwide.
Now, Sony and Microsoft were more famous for having had trouble supplying their PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles, because of the supply shortage happening too close to when those consoles launched. However, Nintendo reported supply issues at the time too, and it did affect how many Switch consoles they could sell that year.
Of course, we also know that Nintendo ended up benefitting from that phase of the pandemic as well, as they already had a large base of Switch owners, who played many of their games, including Animal Crossing New Horizons.
What Furukawa is avoiding to comment on is the rumors going around that Nintendo delayed the release of the Switch 2 from this year to next year. Those rumors claimed that Nintendo chose to spend this time to build up stocks of the Switch 2, and also to prepare a bigger lineup of titles for the console’s launch.
As thing stand, Nintendo is still highly profitable. The dropoff in sales is not so steep that they needed to rush the Switch 2 out. Nintendo, of course, saw a rise in their business this financial year thanks to the release of the Super Mario Bros. Movie. A lot of fans think that’s because it led to sales for games like Super Mario Bros. Wonder, but of course, they made and are still making money from the movie itself too.
It seems safe to predict that we will get sufficient stocks of the Switch 2, thereby avoiding trouble with resellers as Nintendo has had in the past. A lot of fans are certainly looking forward to it.
