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Nintendo’s president says ‘there’s no end in sight to the chip shortage’ (VGC)

kingfey

Banned

Nintendo’s president has said the global chip shortage will continue to hamper Switch production efforts for the foreseeable future.

“There’s no end in sight to the semiconductor shortage at this point,” Shuntaro Furukawa said on Tuesday (via Wall Street Journal) as the company reported its financial results for the year ended March 31, 2022.

Nintendo sold 23.06 million Switch consoles during the 12-month period, representing a 20% decline from the previous year when the console peaked at 28.83 million units.

The company expects to ship 21 million Switch consoles before the end of its current fiscal year in March 2023, which would represent a 9.8% decline from the previous year and a 37% decline from the year before that.

Nintendo also forecast net profit to fall 29% in the current fiscal year to ¥340 billion ($2.6 billion), and revenue to decline 6% cent to ¥1.6 trillion ($12.3 billion).

Lifetime Switch shipments now stand at 107.65 million units.

The CEO of Intel warned this month that the global shortage of semiconductors will now likely last until 2024.

While Xbox Series X and PS5 were released almost 18 months ago, both continue to suffer from stock issues as a result of the chip shortage, although recently Microsoft’s console has been more readily available than Sony’s.

The Japanese company also reported its full-year financial results on Tuesday, which revealed that it shipped 11.5 million PS5 consoles during the 12 months ended on March 31.

While Sony expects to ship 56% more PS5s (18 million) during its current fiscal year, it claimed this total would still be unlikely to satisfy consumer demand.

Lifetime PS5 shipments now stand at 19.3 million units.
 

BlueAlpaca

Member
Switch 2 is going to take longer than I thought, especially with Switch selling out.

Spring 2025? 8 years is a lot but hopefully it's at least as powerful as PS4.
 
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AJUMP23

Member
I am sure he is correct. Shut down economies and manufacturing for a while and you end up with severe problems in the supply line.
 
Nintendo will be able to have 21M and PS5 to have 18M? Only a 3M gap?

Either Sony paid some extra for those units or something doesn't add up. Does Nintendo have more difficulties at producing units?
 

Codes 208

Member
And yet for the last few months, or even years frankly, you can easily find a switch compared to either xbox consoles and ps4/5’s
 

Woopah

Member
Nintendo will be able to have 21M and PS5 to have 18M? Only a 3M gap?

Either Sony paid some extra for those units or something doesn't add up. Does Nintendo have more difficulties at producing units?
For Nintendo the chip shortage is not "we are getting way fewer chips than we'd want to get" and more "getting the chips we need is more challenging and more expensive than without the shortage".

No platform has ever sold 21 million in its 5th before, so at most Nintendo might sell one or two million more if there wasn't a shortage.
 
For Nintendo the chip shortage is not "we are getting way fewer chips than we'd want to get" and more "getting the chips we need is more challenging and more expensive than without the shortage".

No platform has ever sold 21 million in its 5th before, so at most Nintendo might sell one or two million more if there wasn't a shortage.
Oh i'm not trying to deny their numbers. Over 20M in its 5th year is record-breaking. No other way around it.

But they made it seem like they are supply constrained...that's why i wrote what i wrote.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
Chip shortage on old nodes? Nah

Because there’s such demand for the best nodes, it puts pressure on existing lines to ramp up to new nodes and remove old ones as they ramp up production capacities for the high tier nodes in coming years.

RevenueSplit.png


On top of that, as of Q1 2021, in TSMC’s case, 16nm had as much revenue as the in-demand 5nm, meaning there’s a ton of side competition to Nintendo for 16nm that are not necessarily the top dogs ala Apple/Sony/Microsoft/AMD/Nvidia, etc.

All nodes are competing for the same silicon ingot, that’s the biggest bottleneck. Might have different diameters for legacy manufacturing purposes, but it’s still competing for the raw materials. Lithography is the main driver for node differences.

Want more bottlenecks? Ukraine war is choking neon & palladium supply which is needed for all chip manufacturing, regardless of node.
 
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MrA

Banned
Oh i'm not trying to deny their numbers. Over 20M in its 5th year is record-breaking. No other way around it.

But they made it seem like they are supply constrained...that's why i wrote what i wrote.
they are probably expecting issues during the holiday period, next few months switches will be readily available,
1.8 million units a month will be fine for spring and summer but in q3 when the need to 10 million units in a quarter supply could be an issue
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Chip shortage on old nodes? Nah

Actually yeah. Intels CEO has even said that automotive would have easily been covered, if cars were on modern nodes. Instead they have a bunch of ECUs and stuff on legacy nodes, which are in the tightest supply. That's why Tesla has come out relatively unscathed, with fewer but faster chips and on modern processes.
 

kiphalfton

Member
Imagine a company pretending there’s less demand for their product due to chip shortages. Not saying anybody is doing that, but it’s not like they couldn’t, in an attempt to not worry investors.
 

StormCell

Member
Switch 2 is going to take longer than I thought, especially with Switch selling out.

Spring 2025? 8 years is a lot but hopefully it's at least as powerful as PS4.
They're taking such a massive gamble, and I don't mean with the Switch's sales numbers but with interest and mind share for their next hardware. I don't think I've played Switch all year -- I know there are quality games, but I'm just tired of playing them sub-optimally and wish for better hardware to enjoy these titles on. I just gave my Switch away to our neighbor's kid as a birthday present and will play BotW 2 on my wife's Switch if it proves worth playing.

I've said this several times now, but there is a very real risk of losing the core audience by waiting so long to even talk about a successor to the Switch.
 
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Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
So much coping in this thread, lmao. It's been consistently sold out every batch in Japan for months and selling great enough in the rest of the world to not warrant directing their stock to that region. Deal with it.

It hasn't even had a real price cut in most of the world but sure, Nintendoomed. Also lying to investors so they can be sued to hell and back, like it can't be verified if they could or couldn't get more chips, sure Jan.
Wii was selling gangbusters. Until it wasn't.
Oh, I'm sorry, where did I say Switch is gonna sell forever? Nowhere. None of your rambling has anything to do with my post, but keep up the concern trollering.
Brady Bunch Jan GIF by MOODMAN
 
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BlueAlpaca

Member
They're taking such a massive gamble, and I don't mean with the Switch's sales numbers but with interest and mind share for their next hardware. I don't think I've played Switch all year -- I know there are quality games, but I'm just tired of playing them sub-optimally and wish for better hardware to enjoy these titles on. I just gave my Switch away to our neighbor's kid as a birthday present and will play BotW 2 on my wife's Switch if it proves worth playing.

I've said this several times now, but there is a very real risk of losing the core audience by waiting so long to even talk about a successor to the Switch.

I don't think it's much of a gamble. They're making mad money, plenty of people are fine with limited hardware as long as the games are good. Anybody they're losing because of hardware is not going to change as there'll always be a difference between Nintendo and the competition. It'll be less so with Switch 2 with diminishing returns, but still there.

The only thing they need to care about is delivering the games. With BOTW2 coming to switch, that only leaves Mario for a AAA launch title. Get that right and a few more games and I'm there. Actually Mario alone is enough. :p
 
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StormCell

Member
So much coping in this thread, lmao. It's been consistently sold out every batch in Japan for months and selling great enough in the rest of the world to not warrant directing their stock to that region. Deal with it.

It hasn't even had a real price cut in most of the world but sure, Nintendoomed. Also lying to investors so they can be sued to hell and back, like it can't be verified if they could or couldn't get more chips, sure Jan.
Wii was selling gangbusters. Until it wasn't.

At least Nintendo has been fairly good about delivering on the software in terms of both first/second party and third party content. It's not a lack of quality content like it was with Wii.

Provided they are able to deliver on Metroid Prime 4 in year 6, that will be enough to drag me back. And, of course, Pokemon.

But as I said before, I'm just ready for sufficient hardware that can handle the existing games like BotW and XC2. I'll take smooth framerate and enemy draw distances that don't surprise me when jumping from higher locations! Thx
 
Still false, doesn’t matter if it’s old nodes. Still competing for materials and fab resources.
Exactly! I don't understand how that theory even started. The age of the Switch or the "old tech" in the Switch has zero to do with the supply chain/ chip shortage. Nintendo is impacted by it as much as every other consumer electronics company.
 
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