Shuntaro Furukawa believes that the console is going through an excellent state of health and will continue with a double strategy, as it has been until now.
Shuntaro Furukawa, president of Nintendo, is not worried about the arrival on the market of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, the new generation consoles of Sony and Microsoft. After knowing the financial results of Nintendo last quarter ended December 31, with a Nintendo Switch above 52 million units sold, the manager is calm: it will not be adversely affected.
52 million units sold in less than three years
"We will explain the concrete figures that we expect for the next fiscal year at the next meeting, but I believe that there will certainly be changes in the environment when the new products of our competitors appear," says Furukawa at the question of the possible affection of new machines to the market.
Shuntaro Furukawa, president of Nintendo, during Nintendo's financial meeting on January 31, Tokyo | REUTERS / Kim Kyung-Hoon
But Furukawa believes that the target audience of Nintendo Switch and the competition is different and, therefore, there is no possible cannibalization. "We don't believe that the business trend of other companies will have a significant impact on our business." With these numbers, Nintendo Switch is selling faster than PlayStation 2 and Wii, the most successful home consoles in the history of Sony and Nintendo, respectively, but it is still early to make estimates on how much Nintendo Switch will be able to sell. It will bring the equator of its useful life in the market closer to 2020, according to the CEO himself.
"The most important thing for us is that we can maintain the great moment of Nintendo Switch," which was complemented in September 2019 by Nintendo Switch Lite, the family's only portable model. Regarding an eventual Nintendo Switch ‘Pro’ that manages to shorten distances with the power of competitors, the big N has simply said that they will not launch new hardware in 2020.
It is possible to say, in the words of the president himself, the outbreak of the Wuhan coronavirus that has already killed 361 people and has infected more than 14,400 individuals, has affected the production of Nintendo Switch, whose main production base is in the giant Asian. Although it is not known the scale that this pathogen can have, and epidemic, it can lead to a lack of supply of Nintendo Switch in some markets during the next months.
Source | Nintendo Q&A (via VGC)
