Nintendo was prepared to endure it financially this year as sales of its older Switch have declined, but things are turning out a little worse than expected. After selling fewer consoles than expected in the last two quarters (4.72 million compared to 6.84 million last year), the company has lowered its sales forecast from 13.5 million consoles to 12.5 million — a drop of one million units.
The company lowered its sales forecast by 5.2 percent to 1.28 trillion yen ($8.41 billion), though it expects a net profit similar to last year.
The company saw good financial results in the last fiscal year (ending in March 2024), despite the fact that the Switch was first released in 2017. It achieved this largely through the release of the highly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom game and, to a lesser extent, the launch of the Super Mario Bros. movie.
However, the company said in its IR explanatory materials, “There were no such special factors in the first half of this fiscal year and now that Nintendo Switch is in its eighth year since launch, unit sales of both hardware and software have declined significantly year-over-year.” There were some good things, though, such as a slight increase in Switch sales compared to the previous quarter due to the launch of the Switch Lite: Hyrule Edition and other bundled hardware/software releases.
The Switch is Nintendo’s second-best-selling console of all time after the DS, but it has certainly served its time. That means the company will rely heavily on its next-gen Switch 2 console, but that won’t be announced until early next year – so its sales are unlikely to improve in the near future.