While Sony and Microsoft do everything they can to keep pace with one another, Nintendo never appears to concern itself with what its two primary competitors are doing. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One launched four years before the Switch, but Nintendo’s console wasn’t even close to as powerful as those two consoles. Nintendo will fall even further behind when the PS5 and Xbox Series X launch at the end of the year, but nothing Sony or Microsoft do is going to change the company’s plans. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa made that clear in a recent Q&A.
Speaking to investors, Furukawa said (as translated by VGC) that while the launch of new game consoles at the end of the year will be noteworthy, he doesn’t expect the Switch to suffer any ill effects as a result.
“We will explain the specific figures for the next fiscal year in our next fiscal year announcement, but I think there will certainly be a change in the environment as new products of our competitors appear,” Furukawa said. He then added, “we do not believe that the business trends of other companies will have a significant impact on our business.”
In its latest earnings report, Nintendo revealed that it has sold 52.48 million Switch consoles, which makes it the third-best-selling home console the company has ever released, ahead of the SNES and just behind the NES. The launch of the Switch Lite last September helped push Nintendo to a stellar quarter as well.
Another recent revelation from Nintendo came last week when the company confirmed that it has no plans to release a new Switch model in 2020. Rumors suggested that a Switch Pro may be in the works, and while it’s hard to imagine Nintendo won’t release any new Switch models before the end of the console’s lifecycle, anyone hoping for a souped-up Switch is going to have to wait until at least 2021 to get their hands on one.
