European retailer GAME was hoping to improve its financial results in 2017 thanks to the strong demand of Nintendo Switch. However, the severe stock issues that the console is suffering on a worldwide scale has prevented that interest from the public to translate into sales, which in turn is hurting GAME’s profit expectations. The company now relies on a more interesting lineup for PS4 and Xbox One, as well as the future Nintendo Switch sales, to have a better fiscal year 2018.
The company had already presented some disappointing numbers coming from last Christmas period, in part due to the disappointing performance of titles like Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, and lower hardware sales. However, titles like Horizon: Zero Dawn and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands, as well as Nintendo’s new hybrid console, had the potential to correct the course during the first half of this year.
In its update, the company says that “Consumer demand for Nintendo Switch has been, and remains, very strong, however the level of supply to the UK market has been lower than expected. These lower levels, combined with the continued softness in our core Xbox and PlayStation markets, have impacted sales.”
The situation has lead the company’s stock value to drop a 30% in the first six months of the year, reaching an unprecedented low of 23.25p. It has also forced them to revise their profit forecast ‘substantially below previous expectations.’
GAME, one of the main videogame retailers in Europe, is one of the prime examples of companies who have been hit by the expansion of digital sales in the last decade. The United Kingdom branch has experimented many setbacks, in contrast to the consistent growth for the company in Spain, evidenced in the latest reports.
The silver lining in the situation is that Nintendo Switch’s stock issues must end at some point, so the company is expecting to see that growth in sales materialized in the second half of the year, along with the release of Microsoft’s Xbox One, and a stronger software lineup for all platforms.
- This article was updated on March 8th, 2018
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