Nintendo president discusses Switch 2 sales expectations, aiming for Switch 1-like start

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has provided further insight into the company’s initial sales expectations for Switch 2.

As part of yesterday’s financial results, we heard that Nintendo is forecasting 15 million units sold for the first year. Following up on that, during the Q&A portion of the company’s briefing, an investor brought up that this seems to be a somewhat conservative number.

Furukawa said the following:

“We expect sales of Nintendo Switch 2 hardware for this fiscal year to be 15 million units. This figure was set with the aim of achieving the same level of sales as the Nintendo Switch, which was released in March 2017, for approximately 10 months until the end of December of the same year.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has a higher sales price than the Nintendo Switch, so we recognize that there are considerable hurdles to overcome in terms of early adoption. However, the Nintendo Switch 2 has continuity as a platform, as it can also play Nintendo Switch software. In addition, in order to accelerate adoption in the first year, we aim to launch it at the same level as the Nintendo Switch by releasing hardware bundled with software, etc. Please note that the expected sales figures were not set based on the limitations of our hardware production capacity. Furthermore, the situation regarding tariffs in the United States and the possibility of a recession have not affected the expected sales figures. In order to aim for sales of 15 million units, we need to produce more hardware than that. Please understand that we are first aiming for a start on par with the Nintendo Switch, and are working to strengthen our production system so that we can flexibly respond to demand.”

Furukawa also commented on software sales, of which Nintendo has a forecast of 45 million. Note that the number doesn’t include copies sold as part of the Mario Kart World bundle. According to Furukawa, the forecast “was set taking into consideration the fact that there are more titles from software publishers than at the time of the launch of Nintendo Switch, and that there is the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, etc.” He later added that “the momentum immediately after the launch of Nintendo Switch 2 is important, but we believe that the first hurdle will be how to sustain that momentum and connect it to the year-end sales season.”

All of the noteworthy tidbits from Nintendo’s latest financial results can be found here.