Nintendo Annual Revenue Up 4 Percent, Switch Sales Down 12.6 Percent

Nintendo reported its financial results for the fiscal year that ended March 31 and separately revealed that it will announce its Switch successor within the year.

“We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year,” Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa tweeted. “It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be holding a Nintendo Direct this June regarding the Nintendo Switch software lineup for the latter half of 2024, but please be aware that there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during that presentation.”

As for the recent fiscal year, it’s about as good as it could have been given the timing within the Switch lifecycle.

Nintendo reported that it earned an operating profit of ¥64.5 billion (about $417 million) on revenues of ¥1.672 trillion ($10.8 billion) in the previous fiscal year. Those figures represent year-over-year (YOY) gains of 4.9 percent and 4 percent, respectively. The firm largely credited the gains on the April 2023 release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie for the gains, as it “positively impacted sales of Mario-related titles.”

Nintendo sold 15.7 million Switch consoles in the year, a decrease of 12.6 percent YOY, bringing cumulative Switch sales to over 141 million. The Switch is Nintendo’s best-selling console of all time, though it lags behind sales of the Nintendo DS (154 million units) handheld gaming system. That could change in the coming year, based on Nintendo’s expectations (below).

Software sales during the previous fiscal year totaled 200 million units, a decline of 6.7 percent YOY, but still impressive given the age of the device. Standout titles included The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, with 20.61 million units sold, Super Mario Bros. Wonder (13.44 million), Mario Mart 8 (8.18 million, 62 million cumulatively), and Pikmin 4 (3.48 million).

Looking to the current fiscal year, Nintendo expects revenues to fall 19 percent. The firm also expects to ship another 13.5 million Switch units during the current fiscal year, plus 165 million software units. It is planning a live-action Zelda movie and an animated Super Mario sequel film as well.