The impact of the scale of the coronovirus outbreak in China has been felt in a lot of markets, with the gaming industry being one of them. Nintendo have spoken already about how they’re expecting resulting production shortages to lead to stock shortages of the Switch in Japan, and though they had earlier said that such wouldn’t be the case in western markets, recent report by Bloomberg suggests otherwise.
As per the report, Nintendo’s assembly parter in Vietnam – which they use primarily for their US and Europe supplies of hardware – has been affected by the limited production components coming out of the China, and we might start seeing the results of these in the form of stock shortages as early as this April. As the report points out, given the late March release of Nintendo’s first major first party exclusive of the year in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, that’s far from ideal timing.
This isn’t the first we’re hearing of gaming hardware being impacted by the coronavirus outbreak. Earlier this month, we also received reports that the PS5 and Xbox Series X’s launches could end up being pushed back due to production delays and shortages for hardware manufacturers. Read more on that through here.