The next fiscal year (April 2021 — March 2022) could be extremely successful for Nintendo. According to Bloomberg, the Japanese company plans to sell about 250 million games for Switch during this time. If everything works out, the company will set a new sales record. However, analysts do not share this optimism.
The ambitious plans were announced to the publication by Nintendo suppliers and partners. Some of them allegedly received this information directly from the company, others came to this conclusion themselves after analyzing the orders.
According to them, Nintendo is going to increase sales thanks to several high-profile game releases. Also, the release of an updated version of the Switch with an OLED display and 4K support, which the media started talking about two weeks ago, can be a serious help. According to the Japanese partners, with the help of this revision, the corporation will also be able to increase sales of portable consoles themselves.
Note that the sale of 250 million games is a lot. For comparison: in the current fiscal year (ends March 31), Nintendo plans to sell “only” 205 million titles. This is already a record figure for the company. For example, last year gamers bought only 168.7 million games from her.
Meanwhile, analysts were skeptical about Nintendo’s plans for next year.
According to David Gibson from Astris Advisory Japan, this year Switch and games for it diverged well mainly due to a shortage of PS5 and Xbox Series X|S warehouses. In addition, it is still unclear exactly which titles Nintendo is going to release. So far, the company has not made any high-profile announcements, except for Splatoon 3 and the new Mario Golf. Whether there will be others is unknown.
According to Matthew Kanterman of Bloomberg Intelligence, sales of Nintendo hardware will begin to fall in April. This is partly due to a common problem for the industry with the supply of chips.
However, since the release of Switch in 2017, its sales have never fallen. Sales of games for this console also grew steadily.
2020 was a mixed year for Nintendo. Recall that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Switch consoles disappeared from warehouses in Western countries for some time. Nevertheless, income grew. Revenue for the three fiscal quarters (April — December) amounted to $13 billion, which is 37.3% more than the results of 2019.