Last month Nintendo revealed that its original target to shift 20 million Switch units by the end of the financial year was now projected to fall short, and that the revised target is currently 17 million. In the first nine months of 2018, hardware sales for the gaming system were slower than expected, which then resulted in a significant and swift drop in company share prices. More information about this report has come to light via Nintendo’s Nine Months Financial Briefing Q&A session. Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa explained that the efforts to present the Switch’s appeal to their buying audience were “insufficient”:
“As we look back so far (for this fiscal year), we now evaluate that our efforts to fully convey the appeal of Nintendo Switch hardware and software to the number of new consumers we originally hoped to reach were insufficient.
And from the viewpoint of our full-year unit sales forecast for this fiscal year, while we expected that releasing titles during the holiday season would help to increase sales, the year-on-year sales increase during the first half of the fiscal year (April to September) turned out not big enough, which also affected the revision of the unit forecast as we looked back now.”
After so many confident statements from Nintendo over the past few years regarding the Switch’s appeal and what it has to offer—and direct admissions from Nintendo regarding the fumbling of the Wii U launch and what was learned—it’s surprising and a mite perplexing to hear Nintendo claim they’ve struggled to convey the Switch’s appeal to a wide audience.
Does this reduced amount of consumer interest in consoles come as a direct result of the increase in mobile gaming, this site wonders? It’s known that Nintendo is placing a lot of hope in its new hybrid project, coming sometime in the future, but it’s also possible that the company’s optimism in the Switch was misplaced as they’ve needed to re-find their footing after the Wii U years.
Time will tell, but for now, it appears that Nintendo will be doubling down on their efforts to move the Switch—even with revised sales targets—and has plans for many appealing software titles:
“We want to further enrich our software lineup and convey its appeal to consumers, so that they decide this (calendar) year they would buy Nintendo Switch.”
Read the full Q&A summary here.
