Nintendo has announced its financial results for the first half of the fiscal year, related to the period between April and September 2024, alongside an update to the lifetime total of Nintendo Switch units shipped to retailers.
According to the press release, the hybrid console has shipped to retailers 146.04 million units in its lifetime as of September 30, 2024.
This means that it has shipped 2.62 million units in the second quarter of the fiscal year and 4.72 million units in the first half of the year (down 31% year-on-year). A comparison with Sony’s PS5 isn’t possible yet since Sony will release its own financial results only later this week.
Looking at software sales, the lifetime total of Nintendo Switch games shipped as of September 30 is 1,306.10 million units. Software sales decreased 27.6% year-on-year during the six months examined.
The company explains that sales for both hardware and software in the corresponding period last year were extremely high due to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and the effect of the The Super Mario Bros. Movie. These are seen as special factors absent this year.
On top of that, hardware sales in the second quarter of this fiscal year actually grew from the first quarter thanks to the Nintendo Switch Lite: Hyrule Edition and bundles.
Nintendo dropped the prediction of Nintendo Switch units that it aims to sell for the full fiscal year (ending on March 31, 2025) to 12.5 million units, one million less compared to the previous prediction of 13.5 million units. This means that the company expects to have sold 153.82 million Switch units by March 2025.
The software sales forecast has also been dropped from 165 million units to 160 million units.
This also caused a drop in the financial guidance for the full fiscal year, with net sales expected to be at 1,280 billion yen (down from the previous guidance at 1,350 billion yen) and operating profit at 360 billion yen, down from 400.
Moving on to financial results for the six months examined, sales were 523.2 billion yen, down 34.3% year-on-year, while Operating profit was 121.5 billion yen, down 56.6% year-on-year.
The decline was determined by a drop in unit sales year-on-year for both hardware and software.
Lastly, we learn that The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom has shipped 2.58 million units, while Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has shipped 1.94 million units and Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD has shipped 1.57 million units.
Other relevant sellers for the first half of the fiscal year were Mario Kart 8: Deluxe with 2.31 million units shipped (64.27 million life-to-date), Nintendo Switch Sports with 1.26 million units (14.37 million life-to-date), and Animal Crossing: New Horizons with 1.09 million units shipped (46.45 million life-to-date).
If you’d like to compare with historical data, you can check out our article related to Nintendo’s result for the previous quarter, published in August.
If you’re interested in more financial results, other companies have already announced theirs, including Koei Tecmo, Capcom, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Konami, and Marvelous.
