Nintendo Earnings Tank as Market Waits for Next Switch

Nintendo announced that it earned a net income of ¥54.51 billion (about $365 million) on revenues of ¥246.6 billion (about $1.65 billion) in the quarter ending June 30, dramatically lower than estimates and a dramatic downturn compared to recent quarters. But the videogame maker said there was a good reason for the drop off, and it stuck to its previous forecast for Switch console sales for the current fiscal year.

“During the first quarter of the previous fiscal year, unit sales of both hardware and software were extremely high for a first quarter, when The Super Mario Bros Movie energized our dedicated video game platform business and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was released, together with specially designed hardware based on that title,” Nintendo explained in a rather contorted statement. “There were no such special factors in the first quarter of this fiscal year, and with Nintendo Switch now in its eighth year since launch, unit sales of both hardware and software decreased significantly year-on-year.”

They sure did. Nintendo sold 2.1 million Switch consoles in the quarter, down 46.3 percent from the 3.91 million units it sold in the year-ago quarter. And software sales were down 41.3 percent year-over-year (YOY) to 30.64 million units. One year ago, it sold 52.2 million units.

Cumulative Switch unit sales are now over 143.42 million units, still short of the company record 154 million units it sold with the Nintendo DS. But Nintendo didn’t revise its sales estimate of 13.5 million units for the current fiscal year, so the Switch could still emerge as its best-ever selling console in time.

Speaking of time, this would have been a good time for Nintendo to get more specific about the release window for the next generation Switch 2. But the firm declined to provide an update. Apparently, it will still announce the console during its current fiscal year, which ends in March 2025.