Sharp’s financial report noted it was working on screens for a new console, but this detail has now been removed following suggestions that it could be building Switch 2.
On Thursday, the games industry’s ears pricked up when Sharp CEO Richard Wu said that the company had been working with an unnamed firm to develop a new gaming console. In the Bloomberg report filed by , Wu revealed that Sharp had been working on the console since its R&D phase, and was getting ready to launch LCD-panel production lines this year.
Naturally, analysts quickly speculated that Sharp might be working on a new Switch model or a possible successor to Nintendo’s mega-hit handheld. Sharp has worked with Nintendo several times before: the company supplied screens for the DS Lite, for example, and helped to assemble the Switch.
Plus, way back in 1986, Sharp brought out the Twin Famicom, a beautiful console that combined a Nintendo Famicom and a Famicom Disk System into one sleek unit, which is now much sought after by collectors.
However, noted that after Wu’s mention of a new gaming console, this detail was excised from Sharp’s financial report. He tweeted two images showing the before and after versions of the page covering Sharp’s displays: the original report mentioned the ‘launch of new models for VR and games’ (as translated by Google), but the updated report only mentions VR.
シャープが新型ゲーム機向けに液晶を供給することは決算資料で触れられていたのですが、消えました。記事に使った社長コメントは、この資料を参照し「ゲーム機向けに新しいディスプレイを入れる、ではなく、新しいゲーム機向けにディスプレイを入れるということでいいか」の質問に対する回答でした。 pic.twitter.com/7zf1he61zD
— Takashi Mochizuki (@6d6f636869) May 11, 2023
It’s been more than six years since the launch of the Nintendo Switch, and although we’ve had updated models in the form of the Switch Lite and Switch OLED, the machine’s processing power remains the same, and feels increasingly outdated. There are signs that the Switch market is reaching saturation, too: Nintendo’s financial report this week revealed that Switch hardware sales have slumped more than 22% over the past year, and the company downgraded its hardware sales forecasts for the coming 12 months.
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa was careful to not to promise new hardware in the next fiscal year during the investor Q&A, but surely, given the slowing Switch sales, a successor can’t be far away. And perhaps Sharp is involved in putting it together.
