Hoping To Score A Switch Console This Holiday? Nintendo Has Some Very Bad News
Even Santa Claus and his merry band of elves won't be able to save Christmas if holiday cheer ultimately depends on procuring a Nintendo Switch game console. We already knew it was in short supply, but in a sobering update, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa essentially said the situation has gotten more "severe," prompting the company to downward revise its sales forecast.
In an updated earnings report, Nintendo said it now expects to sell 24 million Switch consoles for its full fiscal year. On its own, that's not a bad number, but it represents a negative 1.5 million unit revision from Nintendo's previous forecast. Simply put, Nintendo conceded it is making fewer Switch consoles during the second half of the year "due to the effects of the global semiconductor shortage."
That means an immensely difficult-to-find console is going to be even tougher to find in stock this month and next, and likely well into next year.
"We can't produce enough [Switch consoles] to meet the demand we are expecting during the upcoming holiday season," Furukawa said, according to Reuters. "Currently there is no sign of improvement and the situation continues to be severe so I can't say how long it will continue."
Yeah, not what we were hoping to hear. Nevertheless, Furukawa's comments on the Switch shortage are strangely comforting in a sense, in that knowing is better than guessing. Companies have mostly tiptoed around the situation in public comments, sometimes with overly positive outlooks. But Furukawa shot straight from the hip, and we appreciate that.
This is perhaps not all that surprising, either. Nintendo recently released a Switch OLED console with an upgrade display and twice the amount of storage. Even though the engine is still the same, demand is through the roof for what remains a unique and portable console, now with an improved screen.
Switch sales to date have tallied 92.87 million units, making it Nintendo's fourth best-selling console of all time. Here's how it compares...
- Nintendo DS: 154.02 million
- Game Boy: 118.69 million
- Wii: 101.68 million
- Game Boy Advance: 101.63 million
- Nintendo Switch: 92.87 million
- Nintendo 3DS: 75.94 million
- NES: 61.91 million
- SNES: 49.1 million
- Nintendo 64: 32.93 million
- Nintendo GameCube: 21.74 million
- Wii U: 13.56 million
Even amid a shortage of silicon, the Switch is on track to overtake the Wii very soon for the third sport, which will be quite the achievement, considering how popular that console was during its time.
This also means there probably won't be a 4K-capable Switch 2 any time soon. While rumored on occasion, an upgraded Switch with faster hardware and high resolution gameplay would certainly be welcome, but is unlikely to be in the cards for a 2022 release, given the demand that still exists for this generation's Switch (with or without the OLED upgrade).
If you're interested in a deeper dive into Nintendo's latest financial results, you can scroll through its earnings report (PDF) for its second quarter of fiscal year ending March 2022.
