Nintendo reports Switch sales slowdown and warns no new hardware this year
Nintendo has reported a slowdown in Switch hardware sales and warned that no new hardware will release this year.
The company has now sold 125.62 million Switch consoles as of March 31, up from 122.5 million, but year-end console sales have declined by 22%.
In its results for the end of its fiscal year, Nintendo confirmed it had sold a total of 17.97m consoles during the 12-month period, which means it missed its year-start sales target of 21m (and the later revised target of 18m).
The company forecasts it will sell 15 million consoles during the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2024, which represents a further 16.5% decline, as Switch enters a significant slowdown during its seventh year on the market.
Speaking on a call after the results, president Shuntaro Furukawa suggested that amid this decline in sales, Nintendo isn’t completely confident in hitting its next 15 million target. It also won’t release new hardware before March 31, 2024, he said.
“Sustaining the Switch’s sales momentum will be difficult in its seventh year,” Shuntaro Furukawa said via Bloomberg. “Our goal of selling 15 million unit this fiscal year is a bit of stretch. But we will do our best to bolster demand going into the holiday season so that we can achieve the goal.”
Furukawa added that no new or upgraded hardware is factored into Nintendo’s annual forecast.
Switch’s sales slowdown comes despite two blockbuster releases during the fiscal year, in the form of Splatoon 3 and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, both of which reported strong sales.
And with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom set to release this week, some analysts don’t expect hardware sales to pick up the way it has in the past.
“We expect Nintendo will not release the next-generation
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