Nintendo: the majority of game revenue continues to come from physical sales

More than half of Nintendo’s game revenue continues to come from physical game sales. This is evident from the company’s quarterly figures. The physical sale of games was briefly lowered last year due to the coronalockdowns, but has since increased again.

Nintendo made about 57 percent of its revenue from games in the past quarter from physical sales, according to figures derived from material Nintendo put online when presenting its quarterly figures. That percentage was 53 and 50 percent in previous quarters. At the time of the first lockdowns due to the coronavirus, 44 percent of sales came from physical sales. Before that it was 77 percent.

The share of digital-only software, including the Switch Online subscription, rose from 12 percent a few years ago to 22 percent now. The digital variants in the Nintendo e-Shop of games that are also available physically, generated 21 percent of the turnover.

The supply of Switch consoles decreased last quarter and stood at 3.8 million. With that, Nintendo has sold approximately 93 million units of the console since its release. The most sold game of the past six months was The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD with 3.6 million copies. The older Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was still sold 3.34 million times, Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.2 million times. New Pokémon Snap also reached 2.2 million hits.

The Switch itself was sold 3.14 million times, the Switch Lite 680,000 times. The Switch OLED is not included in the quarterly figures, because it was only released in October. Nintendo expects to be able to supply fewer Switch consoles due to the chip shortage. In the period until March next year, Nintendo expects to sell about 11.5 million units of the Switch, Switch OLED and Switch Lite. That expectation was 13 million copies.