Nintendo R&D To Spend $1.5 Billion In Two Years, Confirming More Switch Models
Paolo Sirio
From the latest earnings calls with investors and analysts, some impressive numbers have slipped about the way Nintendo is currently working to keep the momentum it has reached, kind of surprisingly, with the Switch.
The company is indeed investing a lot of money and overall resources on research and development, which could mean more hardware could be on the way as rumored over the last few months. Even taking that into account, those numbers are somewhat surprising.
Nintendo has spent 69.28 billion yen, $627.8 million, in the fiscal year 2019 ended on March 31, 2019. That’s up 8.8% year on year. And it estimates it will be spending 75 billion yen, $676.28 million, up 7.7% year on year.
The R&D spending will have risen 16.5% over the last two years, which easily means that Nintendo is building new hardware, both experimental and involving new consoles like the much-rumored slimmer/cheaper Switch revision and one that could lead the platform in the next generation.
Those numbers are somewhat surprising if you consider that Sony has promised to invest the difference between last year’s operating income and its current outlook for 2019 into developing its next PlayStation console and that different amounts to 31.1 billion yen, or $278 million ‘only.’
Of course, the PS5 investment won’t be limited to that, but it’s curious to know that Nintendo is doing so much more by just looking at that data.
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