Nintendo Reportedly Exploring Production Alternatives Outside China

hopefully existing chain manufacturing can be used to supply the soon to be huge demand for switch in china

I thought they had already started moving production to southeast Asia 3 weeks ago.

@BacklogBlues They’re Communist in name only, China are just as hyper-Capitalist as the USA and Russia. Workers have barely any rights and the elite run the country just like every other ‘great nation’.

Old news. We heard this when Trump announced his China ban.

@nessisonett Their economy might be capitalist, but their government isn’t at all.

Good Move Nintendo!!

There is the Chinese government and the American government and the various other governments of the world. They are all corrupt. Pick your poison. But the one thing they ALL have in common, they don't care about you. No government in the world cares about the common person. Some lie and claim to, but it's only a tool to manipulate you into supporting them.

The elite and powerful of every nation only care about themselves. They will happily ruin your life if it is to their benefit.

And the wealthy couldn't care less if there is a 25% tariff on a 300 dollar product. 300 dollars for a Trump or a May, or a Merkel or a Jinping is dinner on Thursday night. It's nothing.

America first. If you dont want your cost to be expensive then build in America.

Why can't Nintendo make the console in Japan? Before Gamecube, all their consoles were made in Japan.

@KnightWolf Why would a Japanese company build in America? Wouldn’t there be tariffs when they export to China?

Remember, labor can account for as much as 70% of total business costs and corporate expenses. That’s why it’s a priority for these companies of who makes what and where.

Labor rates in China have also sharply risen in the last while. It’s not even in the top 30 cheapest outsourcing countries. So there’s not as much room for manufacturers to absorb costs when prices go up. There are also a lot of highly skilled laborers in China along with the established infrastructure so moving is a huge consideration.

They could be putting spy-wear in the Switches.

@nessisonett

Found the Chinese bot!

@nintendolie - that's a very good point. Still a fair amount of tech made in Japan (TVs, cameras, hi-fi) although it does tend to be the more high-end stuff. I assume margins for the Switch are quite tight so they need the cost per unit and massive production capacity of China.

@KnightWolf - you realise Nintendo are a Japanese company? Furthermore, do you propose every item made by every company in the world is made in the US then? Lol.

@KnightWolf

If built in U.S., cost will be much higher at retail, as all the employees building these will have to be paid much, much higher than what they are paid in China. You may be saving a small dip in transport, but you'd be paying so much more in salaries....

Maybe Mexico could be an option, or Canada, but nothing could prevent Trump to impose whatever the hell he wants on any other country anyways, so nothing's a completely safe bet. Also, in those countries, skilled people to work in these manufacturing plants would still get paid much higher than in China.

Localy-produced products usually cost more because employees are paid higher here than in those other countries. And this will always be reflected on the retail price. This "America First" mentality is only going to jack prices up. No problem if you're ready to pay more, but just be aware that paying more will be the result. Not less.

Lots of electronics are made in Thailand now (and cars, motorcycles, etc), so if they go anywhere else I bet it's there.

my company is going to ship the product to another nation in Asia, Have it packed there and shipped to mexico where it'll come up on trucks across the border to avoid the tariffs.

at the end of the day they'll go to great lengths to avoid paying people in countries with better labor laws.

@Realnoize lol died at "or Canada"

Well this should be good news to everyone who ever said "Left Joycon!" "Warping!" or "Pro controller D-Pad!"

@nessisonett That's what Communism IS. That's what Communism ALWAYS has been. The difference isn't that China's Communism became a free market. The issue is, as I've said a few times around before, while Lenin was correct that the object of Socialism is Communism, he missed that the object of Capitalism is also Communism. It just gets there slower and via a different route, but the end result of "hyper capitalism" as you call it and Communism is the same - a small elite group with total control of all economic activity and labor. They are both the same system. They always were. "Capitalism" (Free Market) depends on inefficiency to function - it needs unfulfilled markets and room for disruption. As it becomes more and more efficient it consolidates more and becomes Fascism (which has nothing to do with military authoritarianism as common folk-wisdom believes, and has only to do with the false facade of a free market when it's in fact a controlled union of business and state) which, as Lenin pointed out, ultimately aims to become a Communism.

The 3 systems are ultimately the same in their final form, they just get there differently. Thus you are correct when you say the West and China aren't (overwhelmingly) different. But you have the inverse direction. They didn't become like us. We became like them.

@BacklogBlues It’s not exactly true to call China capitalist in the same way as a country like the US. Primary concerns goes to government and state owned enterprises, even though private enterprises do have also have some power. China is what some would call “State Capitalism”, since most of the economy is regulated heavily by the government and oligarchs.

@KnightWolf The tariffs would need to be at least a few hundred percent higher to raise prices above the costs of building in a country with worker safety regulations and a much higher minimum wage.

@BacklogBlues For example: the banks, many construction companies, and even parts of the medical industry are owned by the government in China. In the US all of those are private.

Well, let's see, until about 2003/2004 Nintendo made their games/systems in JAPAN, how about, oh, say... JAPAN again???

@w00dm4n Guess you didn't hear that Trump bolted the NAFTA backdoor shut a long time ago. No longer can countries use Mexico or Canada as tariff-free gateways into the US.

@NotTelevision To be honest, with all the dodgy Trump dealings, the US is teetering dangerously close to ‘State Capitalism’. Whatever builds more hotels and golf courses, eh?

@Heavyarms55 I ,in essence , agree with you. When I was younger I thought it was a kind of “evil”, but as I’ve gotten a bit older I think I see it more clearly. What happens is those with political ambition make connections with the rich and powerful, campaign and offer support to other people in power, build their whole existence on maintaining what they built, then run for office and think about how to convince others of their worth. They aren’t necessarily “bad” people, but ones that are painfully out of touch and have an army of journalist following them around with different agendas and persuasions. They may have started off with spunk and a fighting cause, but they probably get disillusioned and revert into cliches and political theatre, since they see no use either way.

I’ve come to see humanity’s purpose in politics as putting pressure on these individuals so they swing the pendulum in our favor sometimes. Without pressure they won’t do anything because they fear the fallout of the connections they established and the status quo they preside within.

@graysoncharles I didn't down vote, but my guess is the issue is that @nessisonett isn't entirely clear in that post, in my opinion, and people are misconstruing his comment. I agree that China's has a capitalistic economy, but their government structure still has many communist aspects to it, so I don't think people are wrong that refer to China as a communist country. Perhaps a state capitalist/capitalist communism would be more accurate.

@nessisonett Haha. You might be right there. Government welfare for himself but the goods and services everyone else relies upon should be determined by “market forces”. Every time I hear some businessman say education in the US should be run “like a business”, I throw up in my mouth a little bit.

Hopefully it’s not in the US. Don’t give in to Trump’s bullyish policies. Want to piss him off? Do them in Canada or Mexico.

This shouldn't be such a big deal. All they have to do is produce the products in China, and have them delivered to a nearby country without the tarriffs. Then the label can say the name of the tarriff-free country, so, nobody suspects it was really made in China.

Here's an off-kilter idea: Indonesia. Stable democracy with a large working class contingent, a major port in its backyard (Jakarta), and a vastly under-served market for gaming. Makes sense to me, at least...

@Rhaoulos they did. This article is like a month too late

@roadrunner343 they are a capitalist communism government.

@Realnoize actually made in the USA costs wouldn't be that much higher at all. Higher yes but not much higher.

They can produce the USA switch units outside China, and the rest of the world units in China like always.

Come to Britain 🇬🇧

@nessisonett Nothing about them is capitalist. Your comment is as opposite-to-reality as you can get.

@roadrunner343 They don’t have a capitalist economy. The government owns almost everything related to industry and economy there. Simply liking money does not equate to capitalism, despite what some of the fools in this comment section would have you believe. They’re ignorant as can be.

@BAN Literally google state capitalism. Are Alibaba, Lenovo and Huawei owned by the state? No, but they have extremely close ties to the government. Surely you can’t argue that China don’t have a clear bourgeoisie and a clear proletariat?

@nessisonett Literally do the same your literal self. The "capitalism" part of "state capitalism" does not imply the western concept of capitalism, which is roughly laissez-faire capitalism. LITERALLY the only difference between total socialism/communism and state capitalism is that, in the latter, the government undertakes activities of production/economy with profit as a goal and allows some people to choose how to spend some of their time and money, but the government still technically owns and controls LITERALLY EVERYTHING.

This is great! The Chinese government commits tons of atrocities against its own people and should not be supported.

@BAN Like those privately owned companies funded by the Chinese government through grants and such? ‘Too big to fail’ companies that are helped along nicely by the government? Sounds a lot like the Disney-Fox merger which wouldn’t have passed the Monopolies Commission over here. The American government cannot be called laissez-faire if the big man himself is directly interfering for his own private business needs along with his buddies. If that makes you believe China is communist, The USA must be communist too.

I had to refresh my cache as I thought I had read this story a month ago. Turns out I had:
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/06/nintendo_moves_switch_manufacturing_out_of_china_two_new_models_reportedly_in_production

@nessisonett
They’re Communist in name only

Not even close. They do have a hybrid mix of something that resembles quasi-capitalism (and it should be noted that since they opened their markets, the wealth and standard of living of the average citizen has skyrocketed- so for all the criticisms of capitalism, which there are many, particularly when pure tenets are not adhered to, it’s done more to enrich people out of poverty than any other societal construct- but that’s another conversation), but do not mistake them for being like everyone else.

Tencent is government owned, nobody is allowed to enter the market without express permission from the Chinese government, and usually when they do they have to partner with Tencent. The government spies on its citizens with the social credit system, which is a nightmare straight from Netflix’s Black Mirror show come to life. If you’re interested to learn more, read this article

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/01/21/chinese-social-credit-score-utopian-big-data-bliss-or-black-mirror-on-steroids/#49ee2f8748b8

China is still very much communist and authoritarian. They just wised up enough to realize they needed to at least create some kind of free market system, even in limited form, in order to prosper more like the US and less like North Korea.

Also wanted to note- government intervening with big business does not inherently make a country communist, just like government creating limited open markets doesn’t inherently make a country not communist. It has more to do with governmental structure, authoritarian laws, absence of free elections and violent suppression of opposition than it has to do with the presence of a free market, much less a limited one.

@BacklogBlues Only they don't when those same tariffs make them billions in furthering an agenda or increasing their power.

I deal with two Japanese manufacturing companies that have production based elsewhere in Asia - Thailand and Vietnam - so it's a pretty common practice. Companies have steadily been moving away from China, not just because of Trump and his tariffs, but for a myriad of reasons (increasing costs, quality issues, human rights, hedging bets etc...)

That's a bummer. Though I don't follower even my own government's policies, it's too bad because most stuff I get from Amazon or eBay have their label stating Made in China. Especially, Best Buy because it's gotten too expensive to produce and to sell. Hope it turns out!

totally approve of an exodus of the manufacturing business from china. a manufacturing center that doesn't steal ideas for products as they produce them is highly attractive. china always seemed to get away with it because for some reason there were never repercussions for said theft. at least somewhere else we can use hindsight to establish better enforcement. you can guarantee if you make an original idea and product, if you have it manufactured in china, you will have created your own competition because they will steal it, copyright and intellectual property be damned.

Good. Slave labour is subhuman.

@nessisonett U shud go and live there, then tell us "how it is"...

Move production to Nicaragua or El Salvador, give them something to do...

@JaxonH This is the best explanation yet. Thank you.