The Nintendo Switch had a rather good year in 2018 despite some setbacks and a more sparse gaming release schedule. It ended up with 32 million console units sold by the time December 31st, 2018 rolled around, and it’s not even a full two years old yet! However, Nintendo made it clear before that their goal for fiscal year 2018 was to sell 20 million Switch units, and they won’t get that. Thus, they’ve reduced their goal to 17 million, which they’re very likely to meet.
During their recent financial briefing, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa was asked about why he felt the Nintendo Switch didn’t meet its goal, and this is what he said:
“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.”
So basically, he says the marketing wasn’t the best. Which might be a part of it for sure, but given the droughts that the Switch had in gaming last year (especially during the beginning of the year), it might be unfair to solely think that was the reason.
To hear our thoughts on the latest in the world of Nintendo, check out the latest episode of the Nintendo Entertainment Podcast!
