Nintendo won’t be able to meet Switch demand this holiday, says Furukawa

Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa has revealed that the company will be unable to meet Switch demands this holiday period, as the global semiconductor shortage continues to disrupt production (via Reuters).

“We can’t produce enough to meet the demand we are expecting during the upcoming holiday season,”said Furukawa. “Currently there is no sign of improvement and the situation continues to be severe so I can’t say how long it will continue.”

The comments came after the company’s second quarter results on Thursday, where Nintendo cut its full year Switch sales forecast by 6 per cent to 24 million units, citing the “change in our production plan due to the effects of the global semiconductor shortage.”

The Switch has now shipped 92.87 million units since its launch in March 2017, up 3.83 million units since June 30th.

Nintendo’s second quarter operating profit fell 32 per cent compared to the same period last year, though it raised its annual forecast by 4 per cent to 520 billion yen. Its full revenue forecast however remains unchanged.

While Nintendo may have cut its hardware sales target, it increased the Switch software forecast to to 200 million units, “based on the sales performance of the first half”.

The company credited Animal Crossing: New Horizons for prompting a “significant increase” in both hardware and software sales. This success last year made for a difficult comparison for the first 6 months of the current fiscal year.

“So compared to the same period of last year, unit sales have declined for both hardware and software. As a result, hardware sales totaled 8.28 million units (a decrease of 34.0% year-on-year), and software sales totaled 93.89 million units (a decrease of 6.3% year-on-year).”