Regardless of widespread points concerning half shortages, Nintendo has lately confirmed that it has plans to extend the value of the Nintendo Swap.
Earlier this month, Nintendo did report that Swap gross sales had fallen by 23% because of the semiconductor elements scarcity, however firm president Shuntaro Furukawa has confirmed to Nikkei that the corporate desires to “keep away from pricing individuals out,” (thanks NME).
“We’re not contemplating [a price increase] at this level, for 2 causes,” mentioned Furukawa. “Nintendo has bought greater than 100 million Swap items to this point, and it is vital to take care of the momentum of our total enterprise. Typically talking, a weak yen makes home Swap gross sales much less worthwhile.”
Furukawa additionally touched on the way forward for Nintendo’s {hardware} enterprise, although clearly there is no point out of any sort of Swap Professional. “Nintendo will proceed to promote three [Switch] fashions: the usual mannequin; the Swap Lite with decreased value, dimension and options; and the OLED mannequin. We’ll work out the very best technique as we go alongside. We’re doing our greatest to acquire high-quality merchandise at an acceptable value with a watch towards the subsequent few years.”
Whereas Furukawa did not go into whether or not he believes the corporate will really meet its {hardware} gross sales goal, he did say “all I can say is that we’ll attempt to sustain gross sales on the similar tempo. Having hit software program additionally provides a lift to {hardware}.”
Nintendo at the moment would not have any plans for any new Swap fashions for this fiscal yr (which ends 2023), although whether or not there are any plans previous that time is anybody’s guess.
The latest addition to Swap’s {hardware} lineup is the Nintendo Swap OLED, which launched final yr, October 8. It improved the Swap in a lot of methods, notably a 720p OLED show, in addition to a dock that features a wired LAN port that is really inbuilt quite than as an additional you must pay cash for.