Nintendo Revenues and Switch Sales Surged in Q2

Nintendo sold more Switch consoles and video games than expected in the second quarter and the firm’s financials surged as a result. Nintendo reported a net income of $1.27 billion on revenues of $3.23 billion, with each growing dramatically—52 percent and 50 percent, respectively—year-over-year (YOY).

This was a blockbuster quarter for the company.

“In the first quarter of this fiscal year, both sales and profits were notably large for a first quarter mainly due to the concurrent releases of ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ and ‘The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’, and we made steady progress toward our full-year earnings forecast,” Nintendo noted in its quarterly earnings report.

Nintendo sold 3.91 million Switch consoles in the quarter, better than expected, and a 13.9 percent gain over the 3.43 million sold in the year-ago quarter. The firm has now sold almost 130 million units overall and is on track to sell at least 15 million units, as predicted, this fiscal year (which ends in March).

Nintendo also noted that it sold more of the more expensive OLED model of the Switch, which also helped with its revenue gains: Nintendo sold 2.83 million Switch OLED consoles in the quarter, compared to 640,000 original Switch consoles and 590,000 Switch Light consoles.

On the software side, Nintendo experienced a gain of 26.1 percent to 52.2 million units. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom sold 18.51 million units in the first quarter, driving hardware sales. The successful release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie—with a box office haul of $1.35 billion worldwide—drove better-than-expected sales of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and other Mario-related titles. And Nintendo reported a record-high number of annual playing users at 116 million, up from 105 million last year.