Summary
Nintendois already hoping to make good on recent gaming industry problems with the release of the Switch 2. The Switch’s unnamed successor is, at this point, all but confirmed.Switch 2 leaks have been circulatingfor a while, suggesting major revivals of classic Nintendo series, new installments in its flagship franchises likeMarioandZelda, and perhaps evenbackwards compatibility with the original Switch. With the Switch’s astronomical sales numbers and incredible library of first-, second-, and third-party titles,failing to learn from its successes would be leaving money on the table.
Nintendo is expected to reveal the Switch’s successor by the end of the current fiscal year- i.e., before the end of March 2025. But Nintendo’s top brass is aware of more troubling trends in the gaming industry, and they’re taking notes. Whatever the Switch’s successor is called, whatever games it’ll have, and whenever it comes out, Nintendo’s president has already promised it’ll take steps to combat one of the greatest problems plaguing console sales today. Nintendo may have a solid strategy, but will it be enough to beat the bad actors who profit off predatory practices?
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Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa Has A Plan To Combat Console Scalping
How Nintendo Plans To Prevent Limited Supply Of The Switch 2
During a recent shareholders' meeting, as reported byVGC,Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa outlined a plan for future Nintendo consoles to prevent scalping: ensuring that there are enough units on the market to meet consumer demands. It’s a simple plan, but could be an effective one, which cuts at the heart of the problem by making reselling consoles less profitable.
In short, Furukawa expressed a belief thatresellers thrive in markets with limited supplies- that’s why scalpers are able to make huge profits off things like concert tickets, or limited fashion drops. When the entire supply of a console runs out as soon as it’s released, then those who don’t want to wait for the next drop might be tempted to pay a reseller exorbitant prices in order to get one early. If there are enough Switches (or Switch 2s) on the market that everyone who wants one can buy one on demand, at retail price, whenever they want, then there’ll be no incentive for them to pay higher prices to resellers.
Console Scalping Is A Growing Problem In The Video Game Industry
How Console Reselling Has Affected PS5, Xbox Series X/S, & Switch Sales
Scalping may just be the greatest danger to video game console sales in the current generation. When the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S were first released in 2020, it was almost impossible to get one. Interested buyers would either have to be extremely lucky on walking into a brick-and-mortar-store, or wait in virtual queues, sometimes lasting an hour or more, for the chance to add one to their carts. Many wound up disappointed, asentire console restocks would generally sell out in minutes, and many would leave empty-handed before they could even clap eyes on the sale page.
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But where were these consoles really going? Some of them certainly ended up in the hands of legitimate buyers, but countless others were resold at a premium. There’s little data on just how many consoles were scalped, but, in a blog post, data engineerMichael Driscollattempted to do the math. Driscoll analyzed listings on reselling websites like eBay and StockX. His findings revealed that10 - 15% of all PS5 consoles sold in the US by July 04, 2025, ended up resold at or higher than retail price. Scalpers charged a median price of $894 a pop for the Digital Edition - more than twice the regular price. All that added up to a market that made scalpers $143 million richer - and only in the first two months of the PS5’s release.
This highly profitable resale market was, at least in part, enabled by the limited supplyof consoles. The problem began with the Xbox Series X/S and PS5’s release in 2020, and is generally considered to have come to a close sometime in 2023. In April of that year, resale marketplaces began to see a glut of desperate posts o17ffering huge stocks of consoles at less-than-retail prices as scalpers attempted to clear out their stock.
Ultimately,scalping and limited supply became two of the most prominent factors in the PS5’s slow initial sales: it shipped 17.3 million units in its first year, according toComicBook.com, where the PS4 sold 30.2 million units in an equivalent period, according toThe Verge. The console still has a lot of catching up to do, and may never match the Switch’s 141 million (according toNintendo’s financial data). But they weren’t the only contributing factors.
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Don’t Worry, The Chip Shortage Won’t Affect The Switch 2
Furukawa Says Semiconductor Shortages Have Been “Resolved”
There’s a larger, underlying factor behind console scarcity, but Nintendo isn’t worried about history repeating itself. As Furukawa went on to say, “Last year and the year before, we were unable to produce sufficient quantities of Nintendo Switch hardware due to a shortage of semiconductor components, but this situation has now been resolved.At present, we do not believe that the shortage of components will have a significant impact on the production of the successor model.” Here, he references an event more commonly known asthe global chip shortage, which impacted computer manufacturers worldwide between 2020 and 2023.
The global chip shortage was less an effect of a single cause than it was the perfect storm. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the demand for home computers and video game consoles, while also causing production centers to shut down. The US government imposed restrictions on Chinese semiconductor companies, which meant that the same pool of American computer and video game console manufacturers were forced to rely on a smaller pool of parts. Cryptocurrency mining increased demand for GPUs, while severe weather and fires damaged several semiconductor plants across the US and Japan. The ultimate result was that, for one reason or another,it was difficult for console manufacturers to source the necessary parts, and thus consoles were only available in strictly limited supply.
By mid-2023, the global chip shortage was more or less over, and the affected industries had begun to recover; in fact, in July of that year,CNBCreported an excess of computer chips on the market. The consensus supports Furukawa’s projections here:chip shortages are no longer a factor in console manufacturing. As a result, console sales have climbed steadily. 20.8 million PS5 consoles were sold in the most recent fiscal year (according toGameInformer’s report on Sony’s financial numbers), a jump from the first year’s 17.3 million. Once chip shortages went away, limited supplies were no longer a problem, and the scalping market collapsed. That’s exactly the sequence of events Furukawa is hoping to replicate for the Switch 2.
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So, it seems like Nintendo has a plan in place for the Switch 2, and foresees success ahead. Now, the hard part is just getting the average player to give up their original Switch. But between strategies for dealing with console scalping, the end of the global chip shortage, and an announcement expected by the end of the year, it looks likeNintendo’s next console already has a bright future.
Nintendo Switch
The Nintendo Switch is the successor to 2012’s Wii U console. The Nintendo Switch allows gamers to easily switch between playing on a TV to a handheld console. The first model was released in 2017, followed by the Nintendo Switch Lite, which is strictly a handheld console. In October 2021, Nintendo released an upgraded Switch console with an OLED screen.
