Danica Davidson
November 4, 2021 
The experience of COVID has given Nintendo some ups and downs. On the up end, for example, were their amazing sales of Animal Crossing: New Horizons last year, where more than 10 million units sold within the first six months of 2020. But COVID is also causing plenty of congestion and shortages in business, and that’s happening to Nintendo as well.
Nintendo was expecting to sell 25.5 million units for its Switch game console this year and up through March. But there’s a semiconductor shortage going on and they can’t get enough chips for all those sales. So now they’re predicting they’ll sell 24 million units in the same time frame.
“[Nintendo] cannot produce enough to meet the anticipated demand,” explained Shuntaro Furukawa, the president of the company. “We expect the harsh situation to continue as there are no signs of improvement.”
Nintendo is crunching numbers for itself, and thinks it will make 350 billion yen in net profits for 2021. That’s more than $3 billion. In the spring they thought they would make about 340 billion yen for the year. Even though those numbers have gone up, it’s still lower numbers than it was last year during the height of the pandemic. They’ve seen a 27.1 percent drop.
Likewise, Switch console sales have also dropped during 2021. During the first half of this fiscal year, Nintendo sold 8.3 million Switch consoles, but when you look at how many people were buying them last year, sales have dropped 34 percent.
Nintendo remarked that its new releases New Pokémon Snap and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD are selling nicely, and that they forecast selling 200 million Switch games during the fiscal year. Earlier they had been thinking they’d sell 190 million, so these numbers have increased for them as well.
Source: Kyodo News
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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, and its sequel, Manga Art for Intermediates, with professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
