Nintendo reportedly expects Switch sales to decline this year

Nintendo reportedly expects Switch sales to decline in its current fiscal year, due to ongoing shortages and disruption to logistics networks.

That’s according to a report by Nikkei, which claims that the company expects to sell around 20 million Switch units in its current FY, which represents a 10% decline from the previous year and a 30% decrease from FY 2020.

The number of Switches sold in fiscal 2021 is estimated at 23 million units, a 20% decline from the previous year when the console peaked at 28.83 million units.

Earlier this year, Nintendo blamed some of that decline on the global semiconductor shortage, as well as the previous year’s Animal Crossing sales phenomenon.

According to Nikkei, the decline is despite strong demand globally for Switch, and Nintendo would reportedly like to increase production if supply issues could be resolved.

“But the prolonged chip shortage and global supply chain disruptions exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will impact production,” it claims.

In February, Nintendo Switch became the best-selling Nintendo home console of all-time, with 103.54 million units sold as of December 31, 2021, which eclipsed Wii’s 101.63 million.

Switch still has significant ground to cover if it’s to become Nintendo’s all-time best-selling games hardware. Nintendo DS is the company’s best-selling hardware ever at 154.02 million units sold, ahead of Game Boy (and Game Boy Color) at 118.69m.

Outside of Nintendo’s own consoles, only PlayStation 4 (116.6m) and PlayStation 2 (155m) have outsold Nintendo Switch.