As the business day wrapped up in Japan, Nintendo shared their financial results for the July to September quarter of this fiscal year. For the first time in quite a while, they have adjusted their expectations downward.
Let’s dig into the numbers. All amounts are in Japanese yen (¥), with the US dollar equivalent calculated at a rate of ¥152.224 to $1.
First, we have the key financial figures:
– Revenue clocked in at ¥276.661 billion, roughly $1.817 billion, marking a 19.78% drop from the previous year.
– Operating income fell by 29.21% to ¥67.003 billion, about $440 million.
– Ordinary income took a sharp dive by 73.36%, landing at ¥33.631 billion, or approximately $221 million.
– Digital sales were down 19.1%, totaling ¥79.2 billion (around $520 million), but still represented 56.3% of all software sales for the fiscal year.
– Mobile and IP revenue also dipped by 28.88%, amounting to ¥16.5 billion (close to $108 million).
As for hardware shipments, the Switch has now sold 146.04 million units to date, with 2.62 million shipped this quarter alone. Breaking that down, there were 1.26 million OLED models, 720,000 standard Switch models, and 640,000 Switch Lites shipped. To beat the DS in lifetime sales, Nintendo would need to move 7.98 million more systems. To overtake the PlayStation 2, it would require 12.66 million additional units.
Turning to new software, this quarter saw the release of three new games compared to just one last year, which was Pikmin 4. Among them, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom took the lead with 2.58 million units shipped in just five days. Meanwhile, neither Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition nor Emio: The Smiling Man Famicom Detective Club crossed the million-unit threshold. Updates for two releases from the previous quarter showed the Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door remaster shipped 1.94 million units, while Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD shipped 1.57 million.
In terms of catalogue titles, the top 10 games remained unchanged with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe reaching lifetime shipments of 64.27 million units. Interestingly, Pokémon’s Scarlet and Violet are on track to surpass Sword and Shield as the franchise’s second-best-selling series.
Other significant announcements included Nintendo reporting ¥22.4 billion in foreign exchange losses, following gains of ¥30.6 billion in the first quarter, contributing to their significant drop in operating income. The company’s forecasts have also seen downward adjustments: revenue projections were lowered by 5.2% to ¥1,280 billion, operating profit down 10% to ¥360 billion, Switch hardware shipments decreased from 13.5 million to 12.5 million, and software sales projections fell from 165 million to 160 million. This all reflects the slowdown in Switch sales as the console hits its eighth year on the market.
