A few years on, it’s oddly hard to remember how difficult it was to get hold of the most recent generation of games consoles. On their release in November 2020, both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X were incredibly scarce, thanks to an imperfect storm of covid, global chip shortages, and supply chain issues. At the same time, the three-year-old Switch was also having supply issues, and consoles that were available were quickly snatched up by scalpers. But Nintendo reckons it’s in a position to ensure that’s not a problem with next year’s release of the Switch 2.
In a recent shareholder call (pdf), Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa was reminded that he said a year ago that he would put in place measures to prevent resellers from blocking customer access to the (technically unannounced) new console, and asked what had been done thusfar. Furukawa’s response was pretty simple. He said that the answer is to just make enough units to meet customer demand. In other words, Nintendo plans to make loads of the new Switch console.
Now, of course, Nintendo has been its typical cryptic self when it comes to the Switch 2, or whatever it will eventually be called. In fact, everything we know about the new device has been pieced together through leaks and rumors, with just the airy promise that it’ll be announced before June 2025. It’s such a peculiar situation that the company is explaining its techniques for ensuring a console isn’t going to sell out before they’ve properly acknowledged the console even exists.
Furukawa added that in 2021 and 2022’s financial years, Nintendo was unable to meet demand for the Switch, mentioning the shortage of semiconductor parts, but says that this situation has been “resolved.” It’s Furukawa’s belief that there shouldn’t be any shortages of any parts this time out, and—according to a Google translation—says the company is also “considering whether we can take any measures within the scope of laws and regulations, taking into account the circumstances of each region.”
In the same call, Furukawa was also asked how Nintendo would support indie developers with the new system, to which the president said Nintendo has been improving development tools, and improving support for developers, while mentioning the regular Indie World strand of its Direct streams. Rather splendidly he added, “Indie games are essential to increasing the appeal of our platform, so we would like to continue to strengthen these activities in future.”
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