Published , by TJ Denzer
Published , by TJ Denzer
With Nintendo working its way towards a new variant of its popular hybrid console/portable device later this year in the Nintendo Switch OLED, there’s a lot of speculation around the device’s purpose for appearing now. Recent reports suggested that the OLED could have a notably higher profit margin for Nintendo than the original Switch. Nintendo, however, stepped in to deny these reports, claiming that the suggestion that the Switch OLED will have higher profit margins for the company are incorrect.
Nintendo made this official statement via the Japanese company Twitter on July 19, 2021. The statement is seemingly directed at a report recently posted by Bloomberg. According to said report, Bloomberg suggested that while the Nintendo OLED features a $50 USD bump in its asking price, the extra cost of the components necessary for the OLED might only be around $10 extra than the original Switch per unit. That would suggest a $40 increase in profit margin, which is seemingly what Nintendo denies in its statement.
“A news report on July 15, 2021(JST) claimed that the profit margin of the Nintendo Switch (OLED Model) would increase compared to the Nintendo Switch,” Nintendo’s statement stated. “To ensure correct understanding among our investors and customers, we want to make clear that the claim is incorrect.”
The new Nintendo Switch OLED model has quite a few points of interest to it. It’s not exactly a full-on upgrade to the Nintendo Switch outside of providing a better handheld display, better internal storage, and an Ethernet port. Beyond these features, it has the same GPU/CPU setup, providing the same resolution in both handheld and docked functionality that the original Switch has. Even so, Nintendo goes on to reaffirm that the OLED model is the only new Switch the company plans to launch at this time.
Nonetheless, if Nintendo is to be believed, it seems the company isn’t making much more money off the Switch OLED model than the regular Switch. The Nintendo Switch OLED model is slated to launch in October 2021 and pre-orders have already opened.