Today Nintendo announced its financial results for the quarter ended on June 30, 2019, and the company provided interesting information about the performance of its games.
First of all, in the table below you can see the business performance in the quarter, with all significant numbers in the black.
Yet, it’s worth mentioning that all profit figures show a substantial drop year-on-year.
A detailed description of the results reveals that Super Mario Maker 2 shipped 2.42 million units and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe reached 17.89 million lifetime shipments.
During the first quarter of this period (April through June 2019), for Nintendo Switch, Super Mario Maker 2 released in June and has gotten off to a good start with 2.42 million units sold. In addition, sales of titles released in previous fiscal years and titles released by other software publishers continued to grow at a steady pace, including Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which sold 1.2 million units (17.89 million units on a cumulative basis). As a result, hardware and software sales reached 2.13 million units (13.2% increase on a year-onyear basis) and 22.62 million units (25.9% increase on a year-on-year basis) respectively.
For Nintendo 3DS, hardware sales totaled 0.2 million units (44.9% decrease on a year-on-year basis), while software sales came to 1.48 million units (49.7% decrease on a year-on-year basis).
Turning to our digital business for dedicated video game platforms, sales of downloadable versions of packaged software and download-only software for Nintendo Switch showed particularly steady growth, bringing digital sales to 30.6 billion yen (65.3% increase on a year-on-year basis).
For the mobile business, many consumers continue to enjoy titles that were released in previous years, and our mobile, IP related income reached 10 billion yen (10.0% increase on a year-on-year basis).
Moving on to the forecast for the current fiscal year (ending on March 31, 2020), we get a breakdown of the upcoming titles and a mention of the new Nintendo Switch Lite, with the goal to “further expand the installed base for Nintendo Switch.”
Since the financial forecast for the current fiscal year is unchanged, Nintendo probably already considered the new launch when the company disclosed its prediction in April.
Regarding Nintendo Switch, new titles will be released from summer onwards, including Fire Emblem: Three Houses (July), ASTRAL CHAIN (August), The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (September), Luigi’s Mansion 3 (October), Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield (November), and Animal Crossing: New Horizons (March 2020).
Many key titles are also expected to be released by other software publishers as we continue to offer attractive titles that are filled with variety. Furthermore, we plan to launch Nintendo Switch Lite in September as a new addition to the Nintendo Switch family, which is compact and lightweight, making it easy to take on the go. By offering consumers a choice of hardware that matches their preferred play style, we aim to further expand the installed base for Nintendo Switch.
For Nintendo 3DS, we will continue to leverage the platform’s rich software library to appeal to consumers purchasing game hardware for the first time, while continuing to drive sales of evergreen titles that leverage its hardware install base. For the mobile business, in addition to our new applications scheduled for release this summer, Dr. Mario World and Mario Kart Tour, we will also focus on ensuring that more consumers can enjoy the applications that we have previously released.
There is no revision to the financial forecast for this fiscal year originally published on April 25, 2019.
Additional updates on lifetime shipments of games include Super Mario Odyssey at 14.94 million, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at 14.73 million, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at 13.61 million, Pokemon: Let’s Go at 10.98 million, Splatoon 2 at 9.02 million, Super Mario Party at 6.99 million, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe at 4.10 million, 1-2-Switch at 3.01 million, and Mario Tennis Aces at 2.75 million units.
Today we also saw an update of lifetime shipments for Nintendo Switch and 3DS.