Nintendo hardware joins the shrinkage party
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has warned that Switch hardware could be in short supply come the new year. Furukawa believes that ongoing issues with component manufacture and supply might result in fewer global units delivered to retailers throughout 2022, with Black Friday and Holiday sales eating up a large portion of available stock.
“I can’t say that I was able to supply enough for demand after Black Friday, and after the beginning of the year,” said Furukawa in a conversation with Kyoto-Np. “It depends on the demand, but as I was concerned, there will be an impact that [we] can’t make as many as [we’d] want to make.”
If Furukawa’s concerns turn out to be valid, then at least Nintendo is in good company. Both Sony and Microsoft have struggled to manufacture and deliver respective next-gen platforms PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S to stores throughout 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to impact any and all global industries. Xbox Gaming’s Phil Spencer has candidly stated that he expects his company’s production woes to continue into 2022.
While the future is, of course, unwritten, it’s quite clear as we enter 2022 that COVID-19 is still having an enormous effect upon society, from local communities to multi-billion-dollar corporations. Beyond the exceptionally minor issue of “not enough game consoles for sale,” here’s hoping that the new year will see us — as a people — gain ground on the long-running pandemic and its horrendous impact on the global community.