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Unsurprisingly, Nintendo doesn't want its Switch successor to be scalped and resold by those hoping to turn a profit, so the company has a simple but effective plan to prevent that from happening – simply make enough of the consoles in the first place.
Everyone remembers the PS5 stock issues – until 2023, it was practically impossible to find one of Sony's current-gen consoles at its standard retail price, unless you put stock alerts on for every online retailer and sat waiting to dive into a queue at a moment's notice. There simply weren't enough to meet demand thanks to a global shortage of semiconductors, and a significant amount of stock that was available was snatched up by scalpers, who'd then go on to sell the consoles at inflated prices, making them even harder to come by.
While not as extreme as the PS5 situation, it's easy to forget that the Nintendo Switch had long periods of time where it was out of stock, too. Nintendo is hoping that this won't be a problem with the Switch successor.
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As reported by VGC, in the company's 84th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, president Shuntaro Furukawa was asked what measures Nintendo is preparing to stop new hardware from being resold. In his answer (which was shared by Twitter user @NStyles, and translated to English using Google and DeepL), he acknowledges the semiconductor shortage which impacted Nintendo Switch stock, but says this has "been resolved," and the company doesn't think it'll have a major impact going forward.
That aside, Furukawa says Nintendo's ideology remains the same as last year, putting importance on producing enough products to meet consumer demand. It might sound like a relatively straightforward plan, but considering that the company doesn't expect to be hindered by anything like the semiconductor shortage going forward, hopefully that'll be easier than ever to achieve.
Although he doesn't go into detail about them, Furukawa also mentions that as far as other measures are concerned, Nintendo wants to do all that it can, within the extent of the law and some regional differences, to prevent resellers from being a problem.
At the time of writing, we've still not actually seen the Nintendo Switch's successor – most fans just call it the Switch 2, but it's yet to be revealed or given an official name. However, Nintendo has confirmed that we can expect an announcement within this fiscal year, which means we should find out more about it before March 2025.
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I'm GamesRadar+'s Deputy News Editor, working alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield's student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming's news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you're sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.
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