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As part of Nintendo’s earnings report for its latest fiscal year, the company announced a new sales number for the Nintendo Switch. The hybrid system has now sold 84.59 million units, which is a remarkable achievement and puts it on a potentially record-setting pace.
Additionally, Nintendo announced that it has now sold 587.12 million Switch games since the platform launched in 2017. According to Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad, the Switch is selling better than the PS4 and Wii–two of the best-selling systems in history–over similar periods of time after launch. Here is Ahmad’s chart that shows this:
Nintendo also said in its earnings announcement that stock could be constrained in the future due to the ongoing situation surrounding semiconductor shortages.
“The production of products might be affected by obstacles to the procurement of parts, including the increase in global demand for semiconductor components,” Nintendo said. “The consolidated earnings forecast is based on the premise that we will be able to secure the parts needed for the manufacture of products in line with our sales plans.”
In terms of game sales, some of Nintendo’s biggest releases during the April 2020-March 2021 fiscal year included Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. Both were massive successes, selling 9.01 million units and 5.59 million units, respectively. Third-party developers are seeing success on Switch, too, as Nintendo said there were a total of 36 million-seller games for Switch during the fiscal year.
Nintendo’s own games continue to be the biggest, however, with Mario Kart 8 sales climbing to a breathtaking 35.39 million copies, with Animal Crossing: New Horizons close behind it at 32.63 million copies sold. You can see the full list of top-seller’s on Nintendo’s website.
And in good news for Nintendo, a growing percentage of game sales were digital during the period. Digital sales overall jumped by 68.5%, while downloadable versions of packaged games made up 59.3% of overall digital sales.
The Nintendo sales report also contains a slide about future Nintendo games. The highly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel, Bayonetta 3, and Metroid Prime 4 are all listed as upcoming titles, but they still don’t have release dates. They are officially scheduled for “TBA.” A document from the Apple vs. Epic court case revealed that Xbox, at one point or another, believed Breath of the Wild 2 might release in 2020.
Overall, Nintendo had a banner fiscal year for the period ending March 31, 2021. Total revenue was $16.59 billion, up 34.4%, while operating profit was $6.04 billion, an increase of 81.8%.
You can find Nintendo’s full earnings release here on its website.
