RolStoppable said:
It's not something that can be done on a whim, just like ramping up production takes months to materialize in the market place because there are dozens of components that need to be accounted for in the chain of logistics. Likewise, the shortages that Nintendo apologizes for here shouldn't come into effect immediately because there's some delay between time of production and goods being put on the shelves of retailers. So at least for the next couple of weeks there probably won't be a significant negative effect on Switch sales in Japan because retailers have enough stock left to sell. The problem is that retailers won't have much, if anything, to sell after that because the previously scheduled shipments won't arrive due to the situation in China. How big that hole in the chain will be depends on how long production in China is temporarily halted, but predicting that is very hard. With luck it will only be about a month, but if things go really bad and China can't get the coronavirus under control, then there will be prolonged shortages in Japan. The Switch production that had been moved from China to Taiwan last year concerned units for the North American market because of potential US tariffs on imports from China. Nintendo won't touch those units though, so don't expect a reallocation of units made in Taiwan. Because Nintendo hasn't published a similar notice for Europe or the rest of the world, I'll go ahead and assume that that part of Chinese Switch production continues to go according to plan. |
https://gonintendo.com/stories/354491-nintendo-says-switch-hardware-accessory-sales-in-north-america-an
Nintendo claims North America and Europe won't be affected.
Still, hopefully this unfortunate scenario doesn't damage Switch sales too much in the long term. Japan is a big market for them.
