Nintendo profits decline year over year as Switch hits 89 million in sales

Nintendo has released its results for the April-June quarter, and while numbers are normally high for a generally slow period, both revenue and profits are down from a year ago. Perhaps this is not surprising given that the company was then experiencing an increase in demand for video games during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and had just released the mega-hit. Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

In comparison, Switch hardware sales fell 21.7% to 4.45 million units, and software sales fell 10.2% to 45.29 million units. Nintendo has now sold 89.04 million Switch consoles in total; For comparison, the PS5 just hit 10 million. Revenue fell 9.9% to 322.6 billion yen ($ 2.94 billion), while operating profit was 119.6 billion yen ($ 1.09 billion ), a decrease of 17.3% year-on-year.

Unlike last year, when Nintendo sold over 10 million copies of Animal crossing to nearly double its numbers from the previous quarter, there was no successful Switch title to bet on. New Pokémon Snap sold 2.07 million copies outside of Japan (the game is published by The Pokémon Company in its home market) and Mario Golf: Super Rush sold 1.34 million – Animal crossing, meanwhile, added an additional 1.26 million copies to its total. It has sold nearly 34 million copies worldwide.

Nintendo’s biggest release this quarter is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD, that came out last month. The company can expect an increase in Switch hardware sales in the next quarter due to the launch of the new OLED model in October, although it does not bring the widely expected power upgrade. Nintendo’s game list for this all-important holiday quarter includes Terror Metroid, WarioWare: Gather, Mario Party Superstars, and remakes of Pokemon Diamond and pearl.