Nintendo’s profit quadrupled due to strong Switch sales growth

Nintendo doubled its sales from April to June and more than quadrupled its profit from last year. 5.68 million Switch consoles were shipped, more than two and a half times as many as in the same period last year.

Nintendo shipped 3.05 million Switch consoles and 2.62 million copies of the Switch Lite in the quarter. The number of Switch consoles shipped is up 166.6 percent compared to the same quarter last year. The strong growth is probably due to the corona pandemic, as a result of which people spend a lot of time at home and play more games.

The strong growth can also be seen in the deliveries of Switch games; that was 50.43 million in the past quarter, an increase of 123 percent compared to last year. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was again the most successful title. Of these, another 10.63 million copies were delivered. That game came out in the first quarter of this year and a total of 22.40 million copies have now been delivered. Only Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has more copies. That title, which has been available for much longer, stands at a total of 26.74 million copies.

The total number of Switch consoles delivered now stands at 61.44 million and the number of games delivered is 406.67 million. The cheaper Switch Lite, which has been on sale since last year, has now delivered a total of 8.79 million copies.

Ring Fit Adventure has now sold 4 million copies, Nintendo says. The fitness accessory was poorly available in March, April and May due to shortages, but sales are now rising again because production has been ramped up. Nintendo is increasingly selling games digitally. The turnover from this grew by 230 percent compared to last year and 55.6 percent of all software sold has now been sold digitally.

Nintendo notes that Covid-19 has created difficulties in obtaining parts for the Switch, but that situation has been “ almost completely resolved, ” the company says. If the corona pandemic intensifies, it could again cause delivery problems, because there is a lot of time between production and stocking the store shelves. Also, according to Nintendo, there are still delivery problems in some regions due to the high demand for Switch consoles.

Thanks to the good sales, the quarterly turnover amounted to more than 358.1 billion Japanese yen, or about 2.9 billion euros. That is more than double compared to last year. The operating profit amounted to 144.7 billion yen, almost 1.2 billion euros. The operating profit was 428 percent higher than a year earlier.