Nintendo Co plans to increase production of its six-year-old Switch in the next fiscal year after shipping about 21 million of the consoles in the year ending in March, people familiar with the matter said.
The Kyoto-based company had lowered its sales forecast for the console to 19 million units in November last year because of component shortages, but is convinced it can make more and demand remains strong, the people said, asking not to be named because the discussions are not public.
The move to increase output is an unexpected measure at a late stage in the console’s life cycle.
Photo: AP
Nintendo has told suppliers and assembly partners that it intends to churn out more Switch units in the fiscal year starting in April, but has not yet communicated a precise target, the people said.
It might revise down its plans later in the year if demand underwhelms, they said.
However, analyst expectations are for sales to diminish. Nintendo’s plan suggests it sees sustained demand for at least another year.
With prices starting at US$199.99, the console has been hampered more by supply issues than any demand slump, Nintendo executives said.
“Sales in the recent holiday season were not that strong even with improved supply,” UBS Securities Ltd analyst Kenji Fukuyama said.
“People will soon start speculating about next-generation hardware and are likely to refrain from buying the old system. A slowdown in Switch sales momentum is unavoidable,” Fukuyama said.
Switch console sales have historically been driven by the launch of marquee games, such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Nintendo has several titles from blockbuster franchises such as The Legend of Zelda series that is to debut this year.
Meeting Nintendo’s 19 million unit sales target for this fiscal year and going above that in the next one would bring the Switch into the rarefied territory of about 150 million lifetime sales — a mark surpassed only by Sony Group Corp’s PlayStation 2.
Semiconductor and component shortages have diminished across the electronics industry in recent months, with Sony executives expressing confidence that its PlayStation 5 console would be much more widely available this year than previously.
Nintendo can grow its Switch sales in the coming year, especially if it gives them a boost with game-themed special editions of the console, Tokyo Securities Co analyst Hideki Yasuda said.
The company last year released a Splatoon 3 edition of its most expensive Switch OLED model, decorating the hardware with illustrations from the popular third-person shooter and helping drive sales.
The company plans to release The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom — the highly anticipated sequel to Breath of the Wild, a game that was synonymous with the Switch in its early days — in May.
A Zelda-themed Switch would entice existing console owners to buy another unit, Yasuda said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, on Monday issued a statement about the balanced life environment it provides its employees, in response to a Fortune article at the weekend in which several former and current employees in the US were quoted complaining about the company’s “brutal” corporate culture. In the statement, TSMC said average work hours at the company have not exceeded 50 hours a week over the past two years with only a few exceptions, such as when the company introduces a new technology process or speeds up building a new plant. In such situations,
At a red-brick factory in the German port city of Hamburg, cocoa bean shells go in one end and out the other comes an amazing black powder with the potential to counter climate change. The substance, dubbed biochar, is produced by heating the cocoa husks in an oxygen-free room to 600°C. The process locks in greenhouse gases and the final product can be used as a fertilizer, or as an ingredient in the production of “green” concrete. While the biochar industry is still in its infancy, the technology offers a novel way to remove carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere, experts have said. Biochar could
FALLING CHIP DEMAND: Moody’s Investors Service expects revenue at the contract chipmaker to fall by about 1 percent, adding that the firm’s earnings could also retreat Slower global economic growth and US export restrictions would dent revenue at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) over the next 12 to 18 months, Moody’s Investors Service said in its latest report. “We expect revenue at TSMC to fall by 1 percent after its robust growth of around 40 percent in 2022,” it said, adding that earnings would also slip from a high comparison base. Nevertheless, strong net cash positions and good access to funding would enable the company to weather the short-term challenges, Moody’s said. Slowing global growth, coupled with high interest rates and inflation, is reducing chip demand, especially for
WEAK PROSPECTS: The contract electronics manufacturer expects revenue to drop this quarter due to product transitions and a high comparison base a year earlier Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler, yesterday posted a second straight monthly growth in revenue to NT$45.07 billion (US$1.47 billion) last month, thanks to a pickup in smartphone demand. Last month’s revenue marked its best performance since January. On an annual basis, sales dipped 9.45 percent, the smallest annual decline since February, compared with NT$49.78 billion in May last year. Revenue from smart consumer electronics products, primarily iPhones and smartphones for other brands, delivered a “strong” double-digit, month-on-month growth in May because of customers’ pull-in, Hon Hai said in a company statement. That was the only business category