Nintendo has brushed aside concerns about soaring memory chip prices, maintaining its full-year sales and profit forecasts after a strong holiday season for its new Switch 2 console.

The Japanese gaming giant reported a 51% jump in net profit for the nine months to December, boosted by huge demand for the Switch 2, which launched in June and has already become the world’s fastest-selling console. Revenue over the period almost doubled to ¥1.9 trillion (A$19.5 billion).

Despite a global shortage of memory chips, fuelled by explosive demand from AI data centres, Nintendo executives said the impact on its current financial year would be limited.

President Shuntaro Furukawa (pictured below) said the company was holding long-term talks with suppliers and had secured enough components to ride out near-term price spikes.

“At this stage, we believe the recent increase in memory prices will not have a significant impact on third and fourth quarter performance,” Furukawa said, while acknowledging sustained increases next year could pressure margins.

Nintendo reiterated its forecast for the year ending March, expecting operating profit of about A$3.4 billion and net profit of around A$3.2 billion, while sticking with its target of selling 19 million Switch 2 units for the full year.

As of the end of December, global Switch 2 sales had reached 17.37 million units, including nearly 6 million in the Americas and just under 5 million in Japan. Software sales for the console hit almost 38 million units.

The results come amid mounting concern across the tech sector about rising memory costs.

Chipmakers are prioritising high-margin memory used in AI servers, creating shortages of the general-purpose RAM used in consumer electronics such as game consoles. Industry analysts estimate memory now accounts for more than 20% of the Switch 2’s total production cost.

While Nintendo shares are down more than 30% from their mid-2025 peak on worries about future profitability, the company has so far resisted any suggestion of a price hike for the Switch 2.

For now, Nintendo appears content to lean on strong demand, a solid software pipeline – including upcoming releases such as Mario Tennis Fever and Pokemon Pokopia – and tight cost control to keep its momentum going, even as the global chip market remains under strain.