Nintendo Switch Sales Fall by 22 Percent

Nintendo reported its latest quarterly earnings and for perhaps the first time, the news wasn’t particularly good for the Switch. The firm’s operating profit and revenues both declined in the quarter.

“Hardware sales totaled 4.45 million units,” Nintendo noted of the Switch in its earnings report reads. “Hardware and software sales in the first quarter of last fiscal year were substantially driven by the March 2020 release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, so compared to then, hardware sales were down 21.7 percent and software sales were down 10.2 percent year-on-year.”

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Nintendo earned an operating profit of $1.1 billion on revenues of $2.94 billion for the quarter ending June 30. Both are declines—of 17 percent and 10 percent, respectively—compared to the same quarter one year ago. The firm sold 4.45 million Switch consoles, a decline of 21.7 percent year-over-year (YOY). Software sales were 45.29 million units.

Nintendo expects another uptick in Switch and software sales in this and the coming quarter, thanks to the launch of a new hardware model with a bigger OLED display and some big software releases.

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Conversation 7 comments

  • jensengregory

    Premium Member
    05 August, 2021 - 9:15 am

    <p>Just a friendly heads up that the last sentence of the story is duplicated from the first sentence of the story!</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      05 August, 2021 - 9:22 am

      Thanks!

  • crunchyfrog

    05 August, 2021 - 10:16 am

    <p>1.1 billion is a tidy profit margin although I would not compare YOY too much since the pandemic caused a mass sellout of their products worldwide which overdrove their 2020 numbers.</p><p>Still, if they cannot produce the new OLED models in sufficient numbers, I expect their sales will continue to suffer into 2022.</p>

  • MoopMeep

    05 August, 2021 - 10:53 am

    <p>You know whats interesting, wikipedia has a list of best selling games of all time (which Nintendo seems to have many on the list), "Animal Crossing: new horizon" has sold like 33 million copies in a little over a year. So sales dropped for the switch but wondering if they went up when animal crossing came out? My kids play that game and have recently complained that updates haven’t been coming out for lately, so maybe thats a partial cause for the sales decline?</p><p><br></p>

    • rosyna

      05 August, 2021 - 2:19 pm

      <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“Hardware and software sales in the first quarter of last fiscal year were substantially driven by the March 2020 release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons”</span></p>

  • remc86007

    05 August, 2021 - 2:24 pm

    <p>You don’t have to be a graphics snob to feel like you’ve fallen back a decade in time when playing games on the Switch after playing games on the Series consoles.</p><p><br></p><p>My Switch has been used for a total of 2 hours since I got my Series X last November.</p>

  • ringofvoid

    05 August, 2021 - 4:23 pm

    <p>The March 2020 release of Animal Crossing: New Horizon was pure serendipity. It was the perfect product for remote social gaming when the lock-downs and social distancing began. I can’t imagine Nintendo ever getting that lucky again.</p>

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