Nintendo refuses to comment on next-gen plans as Switch clears 132m

videogameschronicle.com:

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa declined to comment on plans for the company’s next console on Tuesday, as it announced Switch has now cleared 132.46 million lifetime sales.

This means Switch has just over 21 million units to go if it’s to become Nintendo’s best-selling hardware ever, beating Nintendo DS‘s 154m. Outside of Nintendo’s consoles, only PlayStation 2 (155m) has outsold Nintendo Switch.

During the three months until September 30, Nintendo reported operating profit of 94.5 billion yen and revenue of 334.9 billion yen, which were both up on analysts’ expectations, according to Bloomberg.

The current weakness of the yen helped this, because most of Nintendo’s earnings come from overseas.

Nintendo kept its hardware sales forecast the same at 15 million but said it was raising its software sales outlook by 5 million units to 185 million.

“The Switch is different from past hardware,” Furukawa reportedly said in a conference call after the earnings release. “It has the ability to give rise to different kinds of new demand.”

Switch is now in its sixth year on the market, and the expectation is that Nintendo could launch a successor console as soon as next year.

*As of September 30, 2023 (compared to Jun 2023)

Despite its age, Nintendo has sold more Switch consoles (+2.4%) and games (+1.8%) in the first six months of its fiscal year than it did in the same period last year.

This is unusually strong performance for a console reaching the end of its lifespan. However, Switch hardware sales are clearly in decline.

In its last fiscal year, Switch sales (17.97m) declined by 22% compared to the previous year, and if it reaches its current target of 15m for this year, that will represent a further decline of 16.5%.

Nintendo says