Disruptions in supply chains are not just regarding Apple, even though Apple has warned ofa big shortfall in the second quarter largely because of these difficulties. In fact, all companies are facing this shortage, from car manufacturers to console makers!
On the occasion of the presentation of their annual results completed at the end of March, Sony and Nintendo announced that they would sell fewer consoles for the 2022/2023 financial year: 18 million PlayStation 5 for the first, 21 million Switch for the second. At Sony, this represents a significant drop of 4.6 million units from predictions a year ago. The demand is not in question, quite the contrary: it is still just as complicated to equip oneself.
For Nintendo, this is 9% less than during the previous year during which the manufacturer sold 23 million Switches. A volume 20% lower than the previous year (let’s put things into perspective, this is still an excellent figure). Shuntaro Furukawa, president of Nintendo, explained that the supply of semiconductors remained uncertain, a speech reminiscent of that held last November.
Nintendo will sell fewer Switches than expected due to component shortages
The Mario creator ended the 2021/2022 financial year with profits of $3.6 billion (-0.6% year-on-year), with sales of $13 billion (- 3.6%). The small problems in the pipes of the components will cause for this new year a fall of 6% of the turnover: it should be established at approximately 12.3 billion dollars. As for net profit, it might be 2.61 billion, or almost -29% less.
Nintendo will have to find a solution to beef up its supplies and boost sales of its console (who said Switch Pro?). More worrying, the catalog of games is less successful. In 2021/2022, 235 million were sold (+1.8%), but the projections for 2022/2023 are quite gloomy: 210 million, almost -11%. However, there is no shortage of big names, between the umpteenth new episode of Pokémon or the sequel to Zelda: Breath of the Wild scheduled for next spring… or possibly following the end of the current fiscal year.
