Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa has revealed that the company is willing to take some risks regarding Nintendo Switch 2 production, in an effort to to meet consumer demands and avoid running into the same issues they ran into back in 2017.
During the company's Nine Months Financial Briefing report, an investor brought up that Nintendo had initially struggled to meed demand when the Nintendo Switch launched in March of 2017, further inquiring if new measures have been implemented in order to avoid such oversight from happening again.
"Because Nintendo Switch 2 is planned to launch in 2025, I would like to describe our production plans together with our financial forecast for next fiscal year, which will be announced alongside our financial results for the end of the current fiscal year," Furukawa responded.
He elaborated, "As of now, we are taking the risk and proceeding with production to meet as large a demand as possible," noting that the company intends to "estimate the volumes of initial demand and subsequent demand" after the Nintendo Switch 2-centric Direct presentation — scheduled for the 2nd of April — basing these estimates on the reactions of viewers/consumers.
Specifically addressing the company's struggles meeting Nintendo Switch demands in March of 2017, Furukawa explained, "As was true with Nintendo Switch, we believe it will not be easy to rapidly increase production capacity, so based on our prior experience, we are making preparations to be able to respond as quickly as possible."
In 2017, just six weeks after the Nintendo Switch launched worldwide, industry researcher NPD Group revealed that the hybrid console had managed to sell 906,000 units in North America alone. Per NPD Group's analysis, this meant that the console had "sold faster in its launch month than any other video game system in Nintendo history."
Following the commercial failure that was the Wii U, Nintendo seemed to have learned their lesson.
While The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launched as a cross-gen title that served as both the Wii U's last Nintendo-released title as well as the Switch's first, it was the latter that saw the most number of copies sold, with 925,000 units as opposed to the 460,000 on Nintendo's previous console.
Other heavy hitters that, at the time, had yet to be released included Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Mario Odyssey — with both titles hitting store shelves before the end of the year — definitely helped the console break sales records that would eventually cause Nintendo to struggle keeping up with consumer demands.
As it stands, if Furukawa's new course of action is satisfactory, it appears that lack of supply will no longer be an issue with the Nintendo Switch 2.