OLED Nintendo Switch (Photo Courtesy Of Nintendo)
Sad news for Nintendo fans as the company will make fewer Switch games consoles than planned in the year because of shortages of semiconductors and other components. Nintendo will reportedly only produce 24 million units through March, which is 20 percent fewer than its original plan.
The COVID-19 pandemic produced a surge of demand for the console while thousands of people spent more time at home. But the production of microchips hasn’t matched the significant demand and Nintendo reportedly won’t match its original production targets.
A Nintendo spokesperson confirmed that the console’s production is being affected by the shortages and that the company is “assessing their impact on our production.”
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa previously confirmed the company couldn’t produce the necessary consoles to match demand. It’s unclear when production will be able to increase in the future.
Despite this decreased target number, demand for the Switch remains high. If the production was able to meet this demand, there’s a very good chance Nintendo would have hit its 30 million target number. The ongoing supply crunch “has left Switch with a 37% fall in sales to 214,000 units in September from a year ago, marking the third straight month of year-on-year declines.”
Nintendo’s original goal was to sell 25.5 million units in the 2021 fiscal year that ends next March, but now that number doesn’t seem likely. However, the Switch is nearing 100 million units sold, having sold a total of 89 million since the Switch’s release back in March of 2017.
It also doesn’t help that Nintendo just released the Switch OLED model in October. This model is a slightly upgraded version of the Switch that comes with a better screen and more storage. A newer model typically means more demand, something that Nintendo probably should’ve considered before launching the Switch OLED during a chip shortage.
The global chip shortage is expected to extend into late 2022, meaning fans will likely continue having trouble acquiring consoles.
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