Switch 2 production cut by Nintendo after slower sales, but don’t panic

Bloomberg reports that Nintendo has dialed back production on the Switch 2 after it failed to meet sales expectations over the holiday period. Citing “people familiar with the matter,” Bloomberg said that Nintendo would make 4 million Switch 2 units this quarter, instead of the 6 million it had originally projected.

The reported move comes as something of a surprise. Outwardly, the Switch 2 appears to be on a roll. There’s no question that it’s the fastest-selling console of all time, selling 17.37 million units up to the end of 2025 — 10 million units ahead of the Switch over the same timeframe. Mario Kart World has sold 14 million copies. Pokémon Pokopia is a Switch 2-exclusive hit, and the day-one Switch 2 edition of Resident Evil Requiem gives the console parity with Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 on the biggest game of the year to date.

Despite the reported unease about the console’s performance, Nintendo seems guaranteed to exceed its target of 19 million Switch 2s sold before the end of its fiscal year. So what gives?

Investors are concerned that Nintendo hasn’t raised that target recently, as the company traditionally likes to set conservative estimates and then progressively hike them up. And it is true that Nintendo noted, during its last round of financial results in February, that North American sales of the console during the holiday period were slower than it expected.

According to Bloomberg, there’s an internal debate at Nintendo over whether the company’s intense effort to provide ample inventory for the console’s launch in June “brought forward demand that would otherwise have materialized later in the year.” This seems on the money, especially considering Nintendo’s end-of-year software lineup was relatively weak. The big guns (Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza) were deployed during the console’s launch period, and holiday titles like Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Pokémon Legends: Z-A were also available on Switch.

According to Bloomberg’s sources, Nintendo “remains confident” in the Switch 2’s long-term success, but the slight slowdown has prompted some catastrophizing among industry observers. One analyst quoted by Bloomberg called the holiday season underperformance “awful news” and warned that, in holiday 2026, Nintendo faces the “tsunami” of Grand Theft Auto 6 plus the impact of the RAM crisis. Nintendo is reportedly mulling a price hike reflecting the increased cost of memory, but the analyst suggested it might have to swallow losses instead to keep Switch 2 sales from “plunging.”

While the RAM crisis poses a real threat to every electronics manufacturer, the rest of this seems a bit over-the-top. Concerns that Switch 2’s software lineup is “poor” are overblown; for a console still in its first year, its game catalog seems par for the course, it’s just that the hits were front-loaded during its launch month. And investors have no more visibility on Nintendo’s future titles than anyone else. Most suspect that Nintendo is keeping at least one major 2026 release — potentially a new Mario game — under wraps. Furthermore, if any gaming company has a level of protection against the GTA 6 “tsunami,” it’s Nintendo, which both traditionally appeals to a younger market, and has a large army of hardcore fans who will buy its games regardless.

Nintendo adjusting the dials on production during the unprecedented success of the Switch 2’s first year on the market seems like no reason to panic yet. But it is true, as Bloomberg says, that a console’s second year on the market is crucial to establishing its momentum, and Nintendo’s GTA 6 counter-programming will be vital. Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, wonderful as it may be, is not going to cut it. It will be fascinating to see what else Nintendo has planned.