Doug Bowser addresses difficulties in predicting and meeting hardware demands
In an interview with Business Insider, Doug Bowser, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America, discusses the problems Nintendo has had with meeting the demand for the SNES Classic and the Switch. While some fans have speculated the motive has been to intentionally understock hardware in attempts to drive-up demand, Bowser explains that the reality behind the issue is far less exciting:
We try to do the best we can with forecasting and anticipating demand, and to put a plan in place … If you see a steep ramp-up in demand, it takes some time to catch up … When you think about procurement of parts, procurement of manufacturing facilities, getting [production] ramped up — that takes some time to respond.
Bowser adds that this should become less of an issue as the fiscal year comes to a close, and that Nintendo has learned their lesson from the problems they had in 2016 with the NES Classic:
We’re really focused on trying to get as much SNES to the market as possible … You’ll see a much stronger flow of product than you did on NES. Lesson learned from the past!
