Nintendo Reportedly Plans To Double Switch Production In 2018

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The Switch, Nintendo's latest hybrid console is doing pretty well for the company, which expects it to outdo the Wii U's lifetime sales within a year. The company obviously thinks so, too, according to a new report at The Wall Street Journal, which says that Nintendo plans to ramp up production of the hardware itself, beginning in April 2018. The report claims that Nintendo is planning to make 25 million to 30 million more units of its successful Switch console over the next fiscal year. Further, Nintendo may plan for even more if this year's holiday sales are strong, according to the WSJ's sources. The company has already built almost 8 million Switches, total, as of its latest earnings report.

Nintendo remembers fun

[thegarbz]

As a Switch owner, PS4 owner and card carrying member of the PC master race there's one thing Nintendo has over all other platforms: They remember how to make fun games. So much of gaming (especially AAA titles) has become and incredibly boring grindfest, or graphics over story / substance. I think I have spent more time on the Switch this year than the two other gaming platforms combined.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I go to my local stripjoint for my grindfest, Lara Croft and Princess Zelda quite don't do it for me.

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[thegarbz]

Makes you feel free, don't it.

Makes me feel free to post about doing something that a majority of people do? Did you have an aneurysm while posting?

Re: Nintendo remembers fun

[Ebsolas]

Well considering how well the switch has taken off and how many 3rd party developers are jumping on board the switch can be considered amazing. It's essentially a portable home console which can be easily projected into a bigger screen which is something that can't be claimed by anyone else. This is extremely tempting for anyone who sells games since the switch basically has created its own, separate market which is unique to only the switch which means that people are willing to repurchase games on it that

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[Midnight Thunder]

In the last generation most of the time I saw a promising game for the Nintendo platform it ended up being a DS game. Hopefully the Switch changes this and makes developers want to focus on the Switch, rather than the DS.

The other thing that makes me like the Switch: LAN play. The promise of being in the middle of nowhere, or up i the air, and being able to play with another person who also wields a Nintendo Switch and not moaning about requiring an internet connection.

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[Anonymous Coward]

They had a huge amount of 3rd party content for the Wii. It was shovelware, but it was 3rd party. The reason you don't remember it is because the barrier of entry dropped so drastically from the days of the SNES. Every shitty mobile developer and their dog made shitty Wii ports of shitty mobile games. The 3rd party SNES games were mostly decent (Pit Fighter notwithstanding).

Personally, I'd buy more games if they weren't 3D. I'm tired of 3D. The games are over-complicated and aren't fun. I don't think this c

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[tlhIngan]

The one thing I love about the Switch is it's both a home console and a semi-portable console.

The problem I have with both the Xbox One and PS4 is they're home consoles - basically I have to be sitting in front of my TV to enjoy the games, making it a distinct activity I have to block out time for. Great, yes, but I find I can't really block out the couple of hours to play so easily these days.

With the switch, not so much. If I can't play in front of the TV, you eject it, and boom, play on the small screen.

supply chain management

[Speare]

So the Switch is still very hard to get in Japan, where you have to show up on shipment day at dawn, or you have to get a lottery draw through a mobile app. If you pay an extra 10000 yen (US$100), you can get one right away, so there's a scalper's economy. It's starting to ship regularly to USA and Europe, with 1-per-customer limits still in place in some areas. This is all what, 8~9 months after release? Add on top of that, the way-under-produced mini-NES/mini-SNES batches. Where is Nintendo's supply chain management? They have good relations with their assembly suppliers, they should be able to say "dedicate another couple lines for this month." They should have good relations with their memory, screen and other component suppliers also. Few other devices out there are struggling to get their parts, anything like Nintendo this year. It's like printing money, but the printer is broken.

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[scary_jeff]

Lots of memory parts have had very long lead times or even been on allocation for some time now. You get what you ordered 4+ months ago, and that's it. Everything that the factory is producing has already been sold, so it doesn't matter how good your relationship with the supplier is. I wouldn't be surprised if the volumes generated by a mass market product like a games console caused even longer lead times. According to iFixIt, the Switch uses a Toshiba eMMC NAND flash, and this part currently has a 20 wee

Only in Japan you have to pay a premium

[thesjaakspoiler]

One cannot even get a Switch for the price that Nintendo is advertising on TV. You have indeed to pay an extra $100 to get even the basic model. This has been going on since the beginning and while shortages have dissappeared abroad, here in Japan Nintendo it's still almost impossible just to buy a Switch. That has nothing to do with lead times. It's just arrogance of Nintendo, gambling that customers will buy their product anyway.

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[Luthair]

The lsat few times I've been in the local walmart in Canada they've had a dozen-ish Switches sitting in stock. At least here shortages appear to have been more than met. On the otherhand, I've never seen a SNES Classic or a NES Classic.

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[LordKronos]

Sorry, but you are just wrong on that. Odyssey does not have any moves that can not be done in handheld mode. Press + to bring up the menu, then scan through the action guide. It explains how to do every move in both 2 controller and single controller mode. Every single move either has a buttons-only mechanism you can use to trigger it, or it requires the exact same motion from both controllers so that you can trigger the move by just moving the entire unit.

Granted, shaking the whole thing in handheld mode

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[LordKronos]

No need to vigorously shake anything. Small movements work. And it's not like the console is made of fragile parts that will bounce around and break. It's solid. It can handle a vigorous shake if that's how you choose to play.

Could they map them to a different button? Possibly. I haven't thought about what would work, what would interfere with the usability of other button-combo moves, and I certainly haven't done any sort of play testing with different combo's as I'm sure they have. So I really can't speak

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[LordKronos]

Wow, I thought we were having a reasonable conversation. Then you had to just go total asshole.

I don't need to justify anything. Nintendo knows how to make fun games. Their track record is proven enough for me, such that I'd buy any console they make even if the only game they made for it was a single Zelda game, and I'd consider it money well spent, no justification needed. As luck would be, Zelda is never the only game, and every system is well worth the investment. I've also got an XB1, and yet I've spe

Consoles are easy

[tepples]

The console advantages, as I understand them, revolve around ease of use [pineight.com].

• No mods means less cheating in online pickup matches.
• Software whitelist means no need for an antivirus.
• Developer and game approval process means less chaff to sort through in the console's app store, avoiding analysis paralysis [wikipedia.org] and cheap knockoffs.
• Standardized hardware means less chance of game misbehavior due to inadvertent reliance on un- or underspecified driver behavior.
• Games tend to be more integrated with a single platform-wide a

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[tepples]

Some entire genres tend to be underrepresented on PC. Take platform fighting

PC has Skullgirls, Streetfighter, Tekken etc.

Those are flat-stage fighting games. A platform fighter, by contrast, includes tactical use of the terrain (the "platforms") for aerial attacks and the like.

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[rodrigoandrade]

A console is a turnkey gaming solution. Sure, there are big updates to download once in a while, but they just work out of the box.

The last thing I want in this stage in my life (I'm 40) is get home after a long day at work and fiddle with drivers, configurations, etc.

Once I get tired of the console and its games, I just sell it and buy the newest one at the time. However, I usually skip generations, and I never buy a console at or right after launch day.

And a PC doesn't have Gran Turismo, of which I'm a fa

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[Kjella]

A console is a turnkey gaming solution. Sure, there are big updates to download once in a while, but they just work out of the box. The last thing I want in this stage in my life (I'm 40) is get home after a long day at work and fiddle with drivers, configurations, etc.

About 99% of the people who break their machine "fiddle" with it and install random crapware or betas or tweaks get better FPS. If all you want is Windows, Steam/Battle.net/GOG and games with auto-updates enabled using release drivers and auto-detect settings I'd say any difference is absolutely marginal.

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[Ranbot]

About 99% of the people who break their machine "fiddle" with it and install random crapware or betas or tweaks get better FPS. If all you want is Windows, Steam/Battle.net/GOG and games with auto-updates enabled using release drivers and auto-detect settings I'd say any difference is absolutely marginal.

This is true of PCs today. Gaming PC lifespans are comparable to console generations without upgrading parts. The PC hardware upgrading treadmill was a thing 10+ years ago, but it's slowed and is no longer a problem, although the myth/feeling persists. I upgraded my PC almost a year ago, but my prior PC lasted ~6 years without any upgrades. Techies can dive deep into PC upgrades and tweaks if they want, but relatively low-tech users (like myself) can get many years out of a PC with just the auto-updates. Co

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[CronoCloud]

Well, not "all" PS4 and Xbox games are on PC.

Why anyone would waist money on those consoles when they already have a PC is a mystery to me.

The word you are looking for is "waste". Considering you made a mistake most native English speakers would NOT make, I'm suspecting English isn't your native language. And since English isn't your native language, you didn't experience consoles and computers like Americans did.

First thing, in the US console gaming predates computer gaming in the home. And even with the first of the personal computers, Apple II, Commodore PET, TRS 80, commercial games weren't a

Re: moneymaking

[Ebsolas]

Translation: CLICK THIS LINK TO DOWNLOAD SPYWARE Random gibberish explaining why you should install my spyware. Spyware.link

Hardware update...

[XSportSeeker]

I was planning to get one once they update the hardware, increase internal space, store savegames in the cloud, stuff like that.
But with it's explosive success, I'm not sure if it'll happen anytime soon...

The Nintendo Console

[RyoShin]

Especially with no other news (AFAIK) regarding their handheld side, which has been their bread-and-butter since the N64, it appears more-and-more that Nintendo is just going to have "the console" which straddles the gap between handheld and TV-only machine.

This actually places them in a very interesting (and good) position, where they are no longer competing directly against Xbonex/PS4, but act more as a "secondary" option. As the DOOM port shows, while the system does have far less power that doesn't preclude hefty games from running on it, and the games that look or run better on the main two consoles can't be played portably with them. I think you'd have a hard time even getting a laptop to be as convenient, as you couldn't pull it out for a few minutes of gaming while on the bus and then stash it away again.