Nintendo Switch Sales Reach New Heights, Digital Game Sales Growing

How’s Nintendo doing from a business perspective? Quite well. The company today reported earnings for this fiscal year ended March 31, and times are (mostly) good. Nintendo pulled in ¥1.2 trillion ($10.7 billion USD), which is an increase from ¥1.06 trillion ($9.4 billion USD) for the previous 12-month period. In terms of profit, Nintendo made ¥249.7 billion ($2.2 billion USD) in operating profit, compared to ¥177.5 billion ($1.6 billion USD) the year prior.

Via Engadget, Nintendo sold 2.47 million Switch consoles in the final three months of the fiscal year, boosting the console’s lifetime total to 34.74 million (which exceeds the lifetime sales of the N64). The 2.47 million Switch consoles sold during the final quarter of the fiscal year is down slightly from the 2.93 million consoles Nintendo sold in the same quarter last year. For the full fiscal year, Nintendo sold 16.95 million Switch systems; that’s just under the 17 million that Nintendo forecasted it would sell the year, but it’s up year-on-year.

As for game sales, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate racked up 13.81 million copies sold, while Pokemon Let’s Go: Eevee and Let’s Go Pikachu combined for 10.63 million copies sold. Super Mario Party sold 6.4 million copies, while Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold 7.47 million copies during the period (for a total of 16.7 million copies lifetime). A total of 23 different games, from Nintendo and others, sold more than 1 million copies on Nintendo Switch during the year.

Another bright spot for Nintendo was its digital business. Sales of digital games grew 95.4 percent to ¥118.8 billion ($1.064B USD); Nintendo called out Switch digital games as showing “especially good growth.”

Sales of the Nintendo 3DS, which is now more than 8 years old, dropped 60.2 percent to 2.55 million units during the year. The NES Classic and SNES Classic combined to sell 5.95 million units.

For more on Nintendo’s earnings report and other related matters, check out the stories below: