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Nintendo has just held its annual shareholder’s meeting and the good news for those expecting an announcement on the follow-up to Nintendo Switch just arriving is that Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa is confident that the Switch 2 will not be impacted by the global supply chain issues that has hit the availability of semiconductors over the past few years, delaying countless hardware and creating shortages and delays on everything from computers to new cars.
In answer to a shareholder’s question about securing “sufficient hardware production, Furukawa–san replied: “Last year and the year before that, there was a shortage of semiconductor components that prevented us from producing hardware for the Nintendo Switch in sufficient quantities, but this situation has now been resolved. As for the successor models, we do not believe that the shortage of parts will have a significant impact on production at this time.”
Both Sony and Microsoft suffered crippling supply issues when the PlayStation 5 and Series X consoles launched and Nintendo will be keen that the successor to the Switch – its first new console in over seven years will not be blighted by the same problems when demand is expected to reach a fever pitch once the release date has been formally announced.
Switch hardware sales were down 12.6% year on year for the 2023-2024 financial year but this still equated to selling just under 16 million units of the aging device. 2023 of course saw the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom which will doubtless have helped shift a few extra units so the declining figure may be skewed somewhat by that.
Anticipation for Nintendo’s new hardware is high and we are expecting an announcement towards the end of the year and potential launch around March 2025 – the original Switch was launched in March 2017, so it would be a full eight years between generations.
