UK retailer GAME noted to investors this week that its full year profits will be “substantially below previous expectations,” in part due to the lack of Switch stock. While demand for the system is “very strong,” GAME said that “the level of supply to the UK market has been lower than expected.”

In the wake of GAME’s remarks, MCV reached out to Nintendo for a statement about the stock situation with Switch. The company said that demand “surpassed our estimates globally.” Nintendo also promises “to bolster our manufacturing facilities and strive to increase production in preparation for the Christmas period”.

The full statement from Nintendo is as follows:

“For Nintendo Switch, our initial plan for the fiscal year ended March 2017 was to ship two million units by the end of March, but we increased production which resulted in shipping 2.74 million units globally.

“For products like Nintendo Switch, it takes time to procure parts and run production, so we perform demand estimates far in advance of launch. Actual demand following the launch of these products surpassed our estimates globally.

“To take advantage of this favorable momentum, we will continue to bolster our manufacturing facilities and strive to increase production in preparation for the Christmas period, which has been factored into our forecast of shipping 10 million units globally by the end of this fiscal year.”

Source

Screw you Steve Jobs!

"we will continue to bolster our manufacturing facilities and strive to increase production in preparation for the Christmas period, which has been factored into our forecast of shipping 10 million units globally by the end of this fiscal year.”

So they currently still plan on shipping 10m units this fiscal year. Or am I misunderstanding this statement?

This article definitely helps to legitimize the argument that the Switch's sub-PS4 sales figures in May were at least partially due to supply constraints. The Christmas season will be the real test for the PS4 vs. Switch, in my opinion.

Yeah. A change to this will probably also not announced in an answer to a journalists request. The shareholders meeting for the quaterly numbers might be such a place.

Yeah, it's unsurprising that it's selling more than they expected, or else the shortages would be pretty inexplicable!

Really, GAME retailer is blaming poor results compared to previous year on Switch constraints?
I don't think Switch is selling less than Wii U last year, so that sounds pretty pathetic an explanation.

And does Nintendo even own their own assembly facilities to "bolster" in the first place?
Or does "Placing bigger long term order to Foxconn et al" just sound insufficiently sexy?

Very true. I am however more curious on how it will perform when Splatoon 2 comes out, all the way till October when Mario comes out. Should be an interesting set of months.

They don't talk about last year.  They are talking about expectations for this year.  They thought there would be more Switches for them to sell, but there aren't, and that is severely cutting into their profits for this year.

OK, I just read 'previous expectations' as being based on previous sales. 

Question (to anybody): The amount of Switches Nintendo contracted to produce WAS known by Nintendo all along,
and I assume retailers like GAME had shipment expectations at least indirectly based on that, i.e. what Nintendo told them,
so GAME and UK generally getting less than that  implies somebody else is getting more, i.e. is being favored by Nintendo...
Who/ Where is that?
Demand surpassing supply based on original plan is one thing, but shipments being *less than* original plan suggests
they changed the plan at least as far as where they target the same over-all level of production to be sold.
Who is so lucky?