Having an aggressive forecast that will be difficult to reach breaks no law, lol, is Sony under fraud investigation for setting a ridiculous 25 million unit PS5 target last fiscal year that they then badly missed and most reasonable people could have said was overly high even a year ago? You can be as ambitious with a sales target and as unrealistic with one as you want, there is absolutely no law that says you have to set realistic sales targets.
Furukawa has said the forecast is ambitious and will be a challenge to meet, so he's even clear on that. The only real obligation a company has is to accurately report their financials in the numbers and not mislead on those. Earnings per share, operating income, debt, etc. etc. If there's evidence that a company has willfully lied on their balance sheet, that's a very different can of worms.
A company is not even beholden to disclose sales on individual game products at all, look at Square-Enix, they won't give their shareholders any actual sales numbers on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth or Final Fantasy 16 because there is no law that says they have to. They can share that if they want, or not share if they don't want to. As we know, Microsoft stopped sharing XBox hardware sales updates a few years ago too, that's not technically illegal either.
No one will care that much about Switch 1 sales targets this time next year when Nintendo has report because all the attention is going to be on Switch 2 and its probable launch, Nintendo knows that full well, when a new hardware launches or is about to launch its sucks all the media attention, investor attention, etc. etc. etc.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 17 May 2024