Gadgets
Nintendo Rides Switch Sales During Lockdowns to Post Record Pandemic Profit
While fresh waves of infections have dashed recovery hopes in many industries, successive rounds of restrictions have helped extend a run of good fortune for video game companies as people seek indoor entertainment.
The firm said surging sales were propelled by the runaway popularity of the Nintendo Switch and the family-friendly game Animal Crossing, which became a lockdown hit.
Net profit jumped 85.7 percent from a year earlier to JPY 480.4 billion ($4.4 billion or roughly Rs. 32,447 crores) for the fiscal year to March, beating the company’s prediction of JPY 400 billion.
It broke its previous profit record set in 2008-09, when it was generating massive revenue driven by its Wii and DS consoles.
Sales were up 34.4 percent to JPY 1.76 trillion, Nintendo said, with 28.8 million Switch units sold — the highest number since the console, which can be handheld or used with a TV, launched four years ago.
But the Kyoto-based company forecast a tougher outlook for the current 2021-22 fiscal year, projecting net profit at JPY 340 billion on sales of JPY 1.6 trillion.
“Regarding the risk associated with COVID-19… the supply of products might be affected if production and shipments are hindered,” Nintendo said in a statement.
“In addition, the production of products might be affected by obstacles to the procurement of parts, including the increase in global demand for semiconductor components,” it said.
The world is facing a chip shortage, driven by a surge in demand for electronic devices during the pandemic and compounded by a fire at a Japanese factory and a drought in Taiwan.
“The global semiconductor shortage could hit the gaming industry hard this year as other essential industries such as the auto sector are waging a fierce battle for chips,” Yasuo Imanaka, chief analyst at Rakuten Securities, told AFP.
Tricky fifth year
The Switch was the United States’ top-selling console in 2020, a year that saw record sales of video games, consoles and accessories, according to NPD group, a market research firm.
Nintendo forecast global sales at 25.5 million Switch units for this fiscal year.
“Nintendo enjoyed strong sales, fully taking advantage of the lockdown demand,” Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute in Tokyo, told AFP ahead of the results.
“I don’t think the outlook is so pessimistic, as Nintendo has won new game users during the pandemic,” he added.
The lower profit target comes as the Switch enters its crucial fifth year. Previously Nintendo’s new console sales have tended to peak in the third year after release, and then taper off.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the latest title in the Animal Crossing series, was released in March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic was causing many countries to impose strict lockdowns.
The game sees players guide their digital personas around an uninhabited island, slowly transforming the landscape with a house, garden and eventually a thriving community of adorable cartoon animal neighbours.
Its leisurely pace struck a chord with gamers around the world, many of them yearning for a virtual escape from the onerous restrictions on movement.
Nintendo’s first ever real-life theme park, a Super Mario-themed zone at Universal Studios Japan, also opened in March after months of pandemic delays, but was forced to close by new virus restrictions just over a month later.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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