We have some interesting new information on what Nintendo has been doing since they confirmed their next console.
As reported by TweakTown, Nintendo has increased their spending on research and development this year, at a staggering 22 year peak.
In fiscal year April 2001 to March 2002, at the start of the GameCube’s lifetime, Nintendo spent 17 billion yen. In fiscal year April 2023 to March 2024, Nintendo spent 137.7 billion yen, or about $ 911 million.
This amount also accounts for 8 % of Nintendo’s net sales for this past fiscal year, so it is a significant amount that was taken from their cash reserves. Nintendo has been slowly increasing their research and development through the decades. The fact that they are now reaching nearly a billion indicates that even the company’s conservative methods of keeping up with the industry has still forced them reach an obscenely high amount of spending.
This also lines up with rumors that have recently come up in relation to the Switch 2. Last month, we reported on Weltrend starting production of Switch 2 components. Yesterday, business analyst David Gibson pointed out that another Nintendo partner, Hosiden, has spent 2 billion yen on production equipment, and 1 billion yen on automation, solely for manufacture of Nintendo products.
We don’t have a rumored date for an announcement or a release date for the Switch 2 here. So what can we parse from this information, exactly?
Obviously, it’s a sign that Nintendo is spending on their next console. But there’s a bigger picture that would be easy to miss if you were only focused on getting some date to talk about.
The Switch 2 is now the one console that Nintendo has spent the most research and development on. Even if Nintendo spreads their R&D for other uses, such as software, networking technologies, or prototyping new ‘gimmicks’, there’s still something stunning about spending nearly a billion dollars on planning and building the Switch 2 for just this year.
And if we remember that Nintendo has been working on this console for a few years before this, it’s absolutely certain that it’s gone past a billion dollars in development. Based on the table Tweaktown provides on Nintendo’s annual R&D spending, they have easily spent three billion dollars on this upcoming console.
All that research won’t all necessarily go to using the most powerful CPU possible. But it suggests that Nintendo has been building an overall experience that will gamely compete with the Steam Deck and other Windows handhelds, as well as the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
