Nintendo Hikes Switch Forecast as Hardware Release Expectations Rise 

This photo taken on January 12, 2024 shows a young customer looking at a display for Super Mario by the Japanese gaming company Nintendo, at an electronics store in Tokyo. (AFP)
This photo taken on January 12, 2024 shows a young customer looking at a display for Super Mario by the Japanese gaming company Nintendo, at an electronics store in Tokyo. (AFP)
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Nintendo Hikes Switch Forecast as Hardware Release Expectations Rise 

This photo taken on January 12, 2024 shows a young customer looking at a display for Super Mario by the Japanese gaming company Nintendo, at an electronics store in Tokyo. (AFP)
This photo taken on January 12, 2024 shows a young customer looking at a display for Super Mario by the Japanese gaming company Nintendo, at an electronics store in Tokyo. (AFP)

Nintendo on Tuesday raised its full-year Switch sales forecast to 15.5 million units from 15 million units previously, as the company squeezed sales out of the aging console over the year-end shopping season.

With the hybrid home-portable Switch nearing its eighth year on the market, expectations are rising that Nintendo will release new hardware this year.

"We want to maintain the momentum of the Switch business," Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa told an earnings briefing.

The Kyoto-based gaming company sold 13.74 million Switch units in the first nine months of the financial year, an 8% decline on the same period a year earlier.

The lifecycle of the Switch has been extended by a string of hits such as "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom", which launched last May, and "Super Mario Bros. Wonder", which went on sale in October and has sold more than 10 million units.

The Switch, whose iterations include the handheld only Switch Lite and a version with an OLED display, followed the poorly performing Wii U and has total sales second only to the Nintendo DS handheld after passing the Wii.

Nintendo shares closed down 0.5% ahead of earnings and have gained 14% year-to-date.



AI Cloud Provider SMC Plans Global Rollout

People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
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AI Cloud Provider SMC Plans Global Rollout

People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights

Singapore-headquartered AI cloud provider Sustainable Metal Cloud (SMC) is planning to expand globally as its sees fast-growing demand for its energy saving technology, its CEO said on Thursday.

"Due to client demand, we’re looking to expand in EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) and North America," CEO and co-founder Tim Rosenfield said, Reuters reported.

The startup, a partner of AI chip giant Nvidia, already operates what it calls "sustainable AI factories" in Australia and Singapore and is set to launch in India and Thailand.

Its clients in Singapore, where it operates over 1,200 of Nvidia's high-end H100 AI chips, include Facebook owner Meta who uses SMC's cloud to run its Llama 2 AI model.

While most data centres depend on air cooling technology, SMC uses immersion technology, submerging servers from Dell fitted with GPUs (graphics processing units) from Nvidia in a synthetic oil called polyalphaolefin to draw heat away faster.

The technology behind the approach reduces energy consumption by up to 50% compared to traditional air cooling, according to the CEO.

Demand for AI is expected to increase 10-fold compared with 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The electricity consumption of data centres globally is expected to top 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026, roughly equivalent to Japan's total annual consumption, the IEA said in March.

SMC is currently raising $400 million in equity and $550 million in debt according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The company declined to comment. The fundraising was first reported by Bloomberg.