Nintendo Co. Switch 2 game consoles at a Bic Camera Inc. electronics store in Tokyo, Japan, on Thursday, June 5, 2025. Nintendo Co. fans from Tokyo to Manhattan stood in line for hours to be among the first to get a Switch 2, fueling one of the biggest global gadget debuts since the iPhone launches of yesteryear.
Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Nintendo shares plunged more than 10% on Wednesday, a day after the gaming giant missed market estimates for quarterly revenue and as it faces headwinds from an unprecedented memory shortage.
The company beat profit estimates though, clocking a 24% jump year on year, bolstered by sustained sales of its Nintendo Switch — now the company’s best selling console ever following its release in 2017. Revenue rose 86%.
Nintendo is facing pressure this year from a shortage in memory chips — a key component in its gaming consoles — that has resulted in surging prices.
According to a note from Andrew Jackson, head of Japanese Equity Strategy at Ortus Advisors, investors remain concerned about the impact that memory costs will have on the company’s margins.
While Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said Tuesday that memory price rises were not significantly impacting results for the financial year, he said it could impact profitability if the component costs remain high over the longer term.
Nintendo primarily uses dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, in its consoles. This type of memory is suffering from shortages due to growing AI and data center demands.
Contract prices for conventional DRAM chips in the first quarter of the year are projected to rise 90% to 95% compared to the previous three months, according to a report from market researcher TrendForce on Monday.
Last month, a top semiconductor industry CEO told CNBC that the memory chip shortage was expected to persist through 2027.
“If the current trend in the memory space continues, I would not be surprised at all to see Nintendo raising prices,” Serkan Toto, CEO of game consultancy Kantan Games, told CNBC in an email.
Nintendo’s latest console, Switch 2, is already an expensive device, and price increases would be hard for “Nintendo’s rather casual user base” to swallow, Toto said. Nintendo released the Switch 2 in June last year, and it now makes up the lion’s share of its console sales.
In addition to the memory crunch, analysts say that investors have been concerned about the performance of the Switch 2, despite Nintendo maintaining its full-year sales forecast for the console on Tuesday.
“The main concern seems to be momentum: The first year is absolutely critical for every new console,” Toto said. “In that sense, Nintendo is a victim of its own success, as Switch 1 had a stellar first 12 months after launch – which is hard to replicate today.”
Nintendo’s ability to replicate that success will likely rely on the success of its pipeline of upcoming Switch 2 games and whether they are enough to convince consumers to upgrade to the gaming console.
In February, Nintendo plans to release “Mario Tennis Fever” for the Switch 2, and “Pokémon Pokopia” in March — two titles from its most popular franchises.
The company also has “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” set for release in April. The first Super Mario movie, released in 2023, provided a significant boost to Nintendo’s console sales, with the company likely hoping for a similar effect on the Switch 2.
On Tuesday, James McWhirter, senior analyst at Omdia, told CNBC that 2026 would be a “make-or-break” year for Switch 2′s future as Nintendo looks to gain more mass-market appeal.
Nintendo’s shares have lost more than 15% so far this year.
— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.
