Zelda Made Nintendo Smile
Nintendo attributed its strong financial performance in the last quarter largely to the success of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. From its release on May 12 to June 30, the game has sold 18.51 million copies. This is the highest first-party global sales volume since Nintendo’s Switch launch in 2017. This success of the game also increased hardware sales, and Nintendo sold 3.91 million in the same quarter.
Sales of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom positively impacted all Switch family systems, resulting in a 13.9% year-on-year increase in unit sales. The Switch OLED Model accounted for the bulk of these sales, with 2.83 million units sold. The Standard Switch and Switch Lite sold 0.64 million and 0.43 million units, respectively.
Besides Zelda, the other big contributor to Nintendo’s income statement is The Super Mario Bros. The movie’s release on April 5. The movie made a huge impact when it was released. Nintendo announced that as of July 30, an incredible 168.1 million people worldwide watched the movie, and as of July 26, its global box office revenue was $1.349 billion. This is the highest revenue for an original movie based on a video game. Nintendo has announced that they will continue their efforts towards visual content related initiatives after the success of the movie.
This success of the Mario movie has increased the sales of Mario games and Mario products such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Software sales also grew, with unit sales in the quarter increasing 26.1% year on year to 52.21 million units. Tears of the Kingdom’s 18.51 million units contributed to more than a third of those sales.
Nintendo reported a significant year-on-year increase in net sales, with net sales rising to 461.3 billion yen (50%) and operating profit to 185.4 billion yen (82.4%).
The success of Tears of the Kingdom, The Super Mario Bros. Other factors contributed to Nintendo’s strong financial performance in the first quarter of the year and helped Nintendo achieve its best release since 2017.
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