Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa Explains Switch Not Meeting Goal For ear

The year that was 2018 was an interesting one for gaming as a whole, especially the Nintendo Switch. As we found out, the console sold a very large chunk of consoles, including being #1 in the US in certain aspects, getting it to 32 million units sold as of December 31st. And the software sales were incredible as well, especially the one-month sales for Super Smash Bros Ultimate. But, as noted by President Shuntaro Furukawa, they aren’t going to meet their goal of 20 million units sold by the end of this upcoming March.

Why does he think it didn’t happen? Well, he blames the marketing strategy for one:

“As we look back so far (for this fiscal year), we now evaluate that our efforts to fully convey the appeal of Nintendo Switch hardware and software to the number of new consumers we originally hoped to reach were insufficient. And from the viewpoint of our full-year unit sales forecast for this fiscal year, while we expected that releasing titles during the holiday season would help to increase sales, the year-on-year sales increase during the first half of the fiscal year (April to September) turned out not big enough, which also affected the revision of the unit forecast as we looked back now.”

That’s an interesting viewpoint, and for sure the Switch could use some more marketing in certain aspects. However, many fans would note that the real reason for this downturn was that the Switch had a very sparce set of new release during the first 9 months that Shuntaro Furukawa highlighted. There were no major 1st party releases in four of the first six months, and that definitely hurt things.

Regardless, Furukawa says that they’re going to actually go bigger with their projections for next year, and ensure that the promoting and software lineup are up to snuff to ensure that they reach their goals.