The news was originally reported by Digitimes, which said that Nintendo was hoping the increased supply would allow the company to meet the demands of a growing Asian market. The Switch remains difficult to find in Nintendo’s home country of Japan, and the company is hoping to expand its sales into Taiwan this December and China sometime next year.
The Chinese market will be of particular importance to Nintendo. The Chinese government lifted the ban on game consoles in 2014, with Microsoft and Sony moving in shortly thereafter. Chinese officials reported that China’s console market grew by 55.7 percent in 2016, which is higher than the worldwide average.
Nintendo may be getting a late start on entering China, but it was recently reported that Nintendo had partnered with Chinese game giant Tencent to port the company’s popular Arena of Valor to the Nintendo Switch. The move could help Nintendo break into one of the industry’s largest markets.
Rumors of artificial scarcity have plagued Nintendo in the past, especially in regards to its line of Classic consoles, but there is little evidence to suggest that is the case with the Switch. Rather, Nintendo blames the scarcity of key components, particularly DRAM, for the issues related to difficulty in meeting demand.
That being said, it is unclear how much this increased supply will help gamers in the west find Switches as it is likely that Nintendo is allocating a large portion of its consoles for China and Taiwan, but it is likely that Nintendo will attempt to boost production for the holiday season as that is generally one of the biggest times of the year for console sales.
