Nintendo recently released its last fiscal year report and expects to sell 15 million Switch consoles in the fiscal year ending March 2024, which means sales will again drop 16.5% and the Switch will also face market challenges in its seventh year on the market.
However, despite the fact that the Switch has been out for years, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said during the company’s earnings call that a price cut to boost sales is not an option being considered at this time.
Shuntaro Furukawa said, “On the hardware side, the prices of certain materials have come down, but the overall cost is still high. We must also continue to consider the impact of factors such as inflation and exchange rates, which greatly affected production in the last fiscal year, so we need to ensure that we purchase enough parts in advance to ensure stable production. Even if raw material prices fall, this will take time to be reflected in manufacturing costs. At this time, we have no plans to reduce hardware prices in the current fiscal year. On the other hand, we also have no plans to raise prices, but the yen continues to be weak and procurement costs remain high, so we will continue to monitor the situation closely.”
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-over-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 shortages of semiconductors and other components that affected production.
Shuntaro Furukawa also said 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.
