Sony, Nintendo say consoles could be hard to find through 2022

Nintendo and Sony indicated today that it will remain hard to grab a new Switch or PlayStation 5 well into next year.

Driving the news: In updates to investors, both companies issued lower console forecasts for their current fiscal years, which run through the end of March 2023.

• Nintendo lowered its Switch projections for that 12-month period, to 21 million, lower than last year’s total of 23 million.
• Sony hopes to sell 18 million PS5s in that time, but had previously planned to sell over 22 million.
• Executives at both companies blamed semiconductor shortages in briefings with investors.

Silver lining: Sony’s forecast is optimistic relative to the past year, when the company sold just 11.5 million PS5s, a few million short of its goal due to supply chain issues pinching manufacturing.

• “We do have a good feel about how to procure the components and parts,” CFO Hiroki Totoki said, but he added that further lockdowns in China could impact production.
• Demand will still outstrip supply, he safely predicted, meaning PS5s will still be hard to get.

Other highlights from Nintendo and Sony’s financials:

• Nintendo and its partners sold 235 million Switch games between April 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, 5 million more than it did in the Animal Crossing-fueled year before it.
• Nintendo’s mobile decline: The company was down $30+ million in revenue from mobile games, amid Nintendo’s cancellation of some of its mobile games and lack of announcements for new ones.
• Sony and its partners sold 303 million games between April 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, 35 million less than it did the year before. Sony cited a drop in third-party game sales.
• PS4 at the end of the line: The system sold 1 million units in the past year as it nears the end of its lifecycle.

One fun 3DS fact: Nintendo says the 3DS, the handheld it abandoned a few years ago, got eight new games in the past year from third-party developers, giving the system new games over 12 consecutive years.

• That makes it one of Nintendo’s longest-lasting systems, though it’ll be a stretch for it to equal the Wii’s 14 years of support.

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Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to show that 23 million was the total of Nintendo Switches sold during the previous fiscal year (not the initial projection of those to be sold this fiscal year).