Nintendo president on Switch performance, new hardware plans not impacted by latest business conditions
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has weighed in on the current Switch performance while briefly giving a few vague comments on new hardware. This comes from the Q&A portion of the company’s financial briefing.
Furukawa described Switch sales as “stable” and “the holiday season results were steady.” He again pointed out that reaching new consumers is a challenge given the age of the hardware, but it’s worth noting that the holiday season saw “a particular rise in first-time buyers of our hardware, and we see this as a positive sign for the Nintendo Switch business going forward.”
As for new hardware, Furukawa was asked if Switch doing well will impact the time frame for the launch of new hardware. It sounds like that’s not the case as he mentioned that plans “are not impacted by whatever the latest business conditions might be.”
Furukawa’s full words:
Last year, when Nintendo Switch entered its seventh year since launch, we said we had entered uncharted territory because, in the history of our dedicated video game platform business, it was unprecedented to expect sales of 15 million units of hardware and 180 million units of software in the seventh year of the life of a system. When we look at the sales situation so far this fiscal year against this backdrop, we believe that hardware sales have held stable since the first half and that the holiday season results were steady. Increasing the number of new consumers has become more difficult, given that the platform is in its seventh year after launch, but as previously discussed, we want to maintain momentum in the business through a good balance of both first-time buyers and demand for multiple units. During the holiday season, we noted a particular rise in first-time buyers of our hardware, and we see this as a positive sign for the Nintendo Switch business going forward.
Looking at software, although overall unit sales were slightly lower year-on-year, we released new titles for flagship Nintendo IP including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Pikmin 4, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder this fiscal year, and were enjoyed by many consumers. I think that this year has been meaningful, both in terms of releasing a steady stream of new Nintendo titles, and in terms of increasing the popularity of these kinds of series going forward.
Regarding new hardware, we are unable to make any comments beyond saying that our company is constantly conducting research and development on new hardware and software. As we mentioned before, articles claiming to reference information released by Nintendo and other speculations have been appearing mainly on the internet lately. Information that has not been officially announced by Nintendo can mislead consumers and investors. We encourage you to exercise good judgment based on the information we provide on our official websites and social media accounts. It takes a long time and thorough planning to get ready for new hardware, and those plans are not impacted by whatever the latest business conditions might be.
