Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa declined to comment on plans for the company’s next console on Tuesday as he announced that the Switch has now cleared 132.46 million lifetime sales.
That means the Switch has over 21 million units to become Nintendo’s best-selling hardware ever, beating the Nintendo DS’s 154m. Outside of Nintendo consoles, only the PlayStation 2 (155 m) surpassed the Nintendo Switch.
For the three months to September 30, Nintendo posted an operating profit of 94.5 billion yen and revenue of 334.9 billion yen, both of which beat analysts’ expectations. Bloomberg.
The yen’s current weakness has helped because most of Nintendo’s earnings come from overseas.
Nintendo kept its hardware sales forecast at 15 million, but said it has increased its software sales forecast by 5 million units to 185 million.
“The past is different from the past equipment,” Furukawa said in a conference call after the earnings announcement. “It has the ability to lead to different kinds of new demands.”
The Switch is now in its sixth year on the market, and the expectation is that Nintendo could launch a successor console as soon as next year.
BEST SELLING PUBLIC GAMES
*As of September 30, 2023 (compared to June 2023)
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 57.01m (+1.55m)
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 43.38m (+0.59m)
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 32.44 m (+ 0.67 m)
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 31.15m (+0.5m)
- Super Mario Odyssey – 26.95m (+0.51m)
- Pokemon Sword/Shield – 26.02 m (+ 0.1 m)
- Pokémon Scarlet & Violet – 23.23m (+0.57)
- Super Mario Party – 19.66 m (+ 0.27 m)
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – 19.5 m (+ 0.99 m)
- New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 16.7 (+0.53 m)
Despite its age, Nintendo sold more Switch consoles (+2.4%) and games (+1.8%) in the first six months of its fiscal year compared to the same period last year. 31.87% of these equipment sales were in Japan, higher than North America (29.67%) and Europe (22.95%).
This is an unusually strong performance for a console nearing the end of its life. However, Switch hardware sales are clearly declining, especially in key markets outside of Japan, where sales have been declining year-over-year.
In Nintendo’s last fiscal year, Switch sales (17.97 million) were down 22% from the year before, and if it hits its current target of 15 million for this year, it would represent a further 16.5% drop.
Nintendo says this year’s software sales were driven by major releases like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, while Super Mario Bros. The release of the movie also had a positive effect on the sales of Mario games, with five million sellers so far this year.
Nintendo shipped 2.93m Switch consoles in the three months, bringing its total to 6.84m for the first half of FY24. This is divided into 1.25 million Nintendo Switch, 4.69 million Nintendo Switch – OLED Model and 0.90 million Nintendo Switch Lite units.
In software, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom sold another million units to reach 19.5 million lifetime sales, while new release Pikmin 4 debuted with 2.61 million sales in its first six weeks of availability. During this period, Super Mario Bros., which came out in October and set franchise release records in many territories. Wonder’s release not included.
“For hardware, continuing to deliver the appeal of the Nintendo Switch, we’re looking to put not one system in every home, but several in every home, or even one system for every person,” Nintendo said in a forecast statement.
“Another goal is to continuously release new offers so that more consumers will continue to play Nintendo Switch for longer and we can increase hardware sales. For software, we have Super Mario Bros. in October. Wonder has been featured in Super Mario Bros. for almost 11 years. We released it as the first completely new part of the series.
“That month we released Detective Pikachu Returns, and heading into the holiday season, we plan to release more titles including WarioWare: Move It! and Super Mario RPG (both due out in November). In addition, The Indigo Disk, the second part of The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero expansion content for Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet, is scheduled to be released in December.