Shuntaro Furukawa, president of the company, says he has insured the console components for an immediate period, but there will be problems if the semiconductor crisis continues.
PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S are limited in production due to the shortage of semiconductors that affects the electronics industry, also mobile phones, graphics cards and other devices. So far it seems that Nintendo Switch has not had shortage problems, but Shuntaro Furukawa, president of Nintendo has commented to Nikkei that this could happen in the future if strong demand continues and the crisis continues over time. “We have been able to secure the necessary materials for the immediate production of semiconductors on Nintendo Switch,” he told this media about the problem. “However, in Japan and other countries, the demand has been very strong since the beginning of this year, andthere is the possibility of seeing console shortages in some stores in the future . It’s hard to say how we can avoid this, but in some cases we may not meet demand.
This semiconductor crisis has coincided with the beginning of the pandemic, in the first quarter of 2020, together with the increase in domestic entertainment, the demand for consoles and the arrival of a new generation. Although the new consoles are selling well, it is estimated that the same or more than the start of the previous generation, it is still difficult to get one of the new consoles: each consignment put up for sale online is sold out in minutes. AMD, responsible for making the CPUs and GPUs for the Xbox Series and PS5, believes the problems will continue into the second half of the year .
The shortage could continue into Christmas
Jim Ryan of PlayStation recently assured that the production of new units “increases continuously” since the launch of the consoles in November and that they hope to produce “really decent figures” in the second half of 2021, but does not clear the doubt of whether in the next Christmas campaign the shelves of the stores will be full of his new console, since “there are very few magic wands that can be waved”.