Nintendo today announced results for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023, showing a decline in Switch sales, while hinting that no new hardware will be released until April 2024.
It was previously reported that Switch sales reached 125.62 million units as of March 31, 2023. Nintendo said hardware sales fell 22.1 percent year-on-year to 17.97 million units, below its sales target of 21 million units set at the beginning of the year (later revised to 18 million units), which officials said was due to a shortage of semiconductors and other components affecting production. Nintendo expects to sell 15 million Switch consoles in the fiscal year ending March 2024, meaning sales will fall another 16.5 percent and the Switch will face market challenges in its seventh year on the market.
“Nintendo Switch has been on the market for seven years and it will be increasingly difficult to maintain the previous sales momentum, but our goal is to maximize sales by enabling more consumers to play Switch for the long term.” Nintendo said in a statement.
In a conference call following the earnings release, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said Nintendo is not entirely confident of reaching its next target of 15 million units amid slowing console sales, according to Bloomberg. Furukawa also said that there is no new or upgraded hardware in Nintendo’s annual plan, which means we won’t see new Switch models until the second quarter of next year.
“It will be difficult to maintain the Switch sales momentum in its seventh year.” Our goal of selling 15 million consoles this year is a bit of a stretch,” Furukawa said. But we will do our best to boost demand during the holiday season in order to achieve that goal.”
Last year, the Switch was already confirmed as the best-selling Nintendo home console of all time, breaking the Wii’s record of 101.63 million units. However, it is still far from the 150.02 million units sold by Nintendo DS. Aside from Nintendo’s own consoles, only the PlayStation 2 (155 million units) surpassed the Switch.
