Since its launch earlier this year, the Nintendo Switch has steadily grown its audience with over 7.5 million systems shipped, and next year the company might be gearing up for a big push to growing that audience even more.
In a report from The Wall Street Journal, Nintendo is planning to increase production of the Nintendo Switch to bring between 25-30 million Switches to retailers through 2018, with the ramped up production to begin in April with the start of Nintendo’s new fiscal year.
According to the report, this plan is “still in the early stages” as Nintendo stated, but the production increase sounds like a promising development given that the system has been in high demand for a good part of the year. Currently, Nintendo’s projections for the fiscal year are to ship 14 million Switch units, though the increased production of the system for next fiscal year could change depending on how well the system performs during the upcoming holiday season (and the Switch’s first holiday season).
That being said, the report is based on anonymous sources, so we should take it with the usual massive grain of salt.
The Switch launched back in March of this year, and so far has seen encouraging success, especially after the commercial failure of Nintendo’s last system, the Wii U. Since launch, the Switch has delivered a number of quality titles that also have resonated with audiences like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and the recently-released Super Mario Odyssey, which crossed over two million units in its first few days of release.