Nintendo President, Shuntaro Furukawa recently talked to investors at their financial report for the end of the fiscal year. The company has addressed the impact of COVID-19 in the production of new Switch consoles and warns that next fiscal year could see losses in software and hardware sales, he also said that due to “big limitations on what can be done from home” some games might face a delay.
“We are not in a position to be able to produce the full quantity of units we actually want to produce,” … “That said, there are signs of gradual improvement, and so we anticipate that the impact of COVID-19 on production will subside to some degree by summer, and that the volume we will be able to produce throughout the year will align with our sales forecast units for this fiscal year.”
“But even so, we are gradually gaining experience in assessing what can and cannot be done remotely, and in determining how much progress we can make on the work we are able to do from home” …”Please be aware that the impact on game development in terms of both hardware and software may potentially increase as the amount of time spent working remotely increases.”
The surprise announcement of Paper Mario: Origami Kingdom may suggest the struggle of Nintendo to meet the schedule of the games who are currently in development. The delay or cancellation of Nintendo Direct that were expected to arrive in June is also a worrying sign from the company.
Is uncertain if Nintendo will return to their traditional announcements on Direct style events, or if Nintendo will only make announcements when the games’ development is complete.
Nintendo has been heavily affected by COVID-19, recently the company was forced to suspend their three decade long, repair service, Shuntaro Furukawa has openly talked about how the virus is affecting the company and the repercussions of the virus. In the eve of one of the most successful years of the company, in January Furukawa warned that “prolonged problems will affect the product delivery plans”.
Nintendo started the year close to the goal of selling 18 million Switch units, that was their initial goal for the financial year, the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons together with its special edition, and the new Nintendo Switch Lite Coral Edition increased the sales of the small console.
Nintendo managed to have a positive end of the fiscal year thanks to the launch of Nintendo Switch Lite, even with COVID-19 slowing Switch sales, over 21 million units of consoles were sold.
Source: GameIndustry
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