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Friday, April 28, 2017

Nintendo's Fiscal Year 2017: Featuring Nintendo Switch!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - That, and many more factoids (including a FAKE NEWS alert!) with Nintendo's annual financial disclosures!

For a business nerd like I am, this is an exciting time to be had. Yesterday on April 27, 2017, Nintendo released their Fiscal Year 2017 information! (That's the beginning of April 2016 to the end of March 2017, to you.) And it has all sorts of hidden goodie information below big headlining numbers. But I guess we need to get those headlines out of the way:

  • The Nintendo Switch has sold 2.74 million units
    • Nintendo projects to sell 10,000,000 more by the end of March 2018
    • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sold 2.76 million units on the Switch, while 2.7 million non-Zelda Switch games have also been sold. That means The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has an insane attach rate of over 100%.
  • The Nintendo 3DS family sold a combined 7.27 million units
    • Nintendo projects to sell 6 million more 3DS family units by the end of March 2018
    • The Nintendo 2DS sold 2.49 million, while the New Nintendo 3DS XL sold 4.02 million
    • The Nintendo 2DS seems the most popular in Europe/Australia for some reason
    • Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon, combined, are the #2 best-selling 3DS games ever at 15.44 million units, only behind Pokémon X and Pokémon Y at lifelong 16.11 million. Mario Kart 7 drives in third at a lifelong 15.22 million. (Compare to a few months ago.)
    • They announced the New Nintendo 2DS XL, which will get its own KoopaTV article later. 
  • If you want a Wii U, you might have to get one off the second-hand market.
  • Nintendo's operating profit was less than last year (profit relating to business operations), but their net profit was much higher because of that whole Seattle Mariners sale.

Despite that last bullet point, Nintendo beat their own projections. That's always a welcome thing. Clearly, it was advantageous for Nintendo to launch the Switch in March as opposed to arbitrarily delaying it, despite people's claims that the Nintendo Switch launch was somehow “rushed.”

But there's some really interesting numbers regarding said Nintendo Switch launch.

Nintendo actually sold MORE Nintendo Switch than they had planned. Too bad it wasn't enough to meet the demand.

(Let's appreciate that rhyme.)

Also, they had “lower-than-expected advertising expenses”. Their advertising expenses for the year was 726 million yen, or about 6.5 million dollars. Unless they aren't being straight with what they're calling advertising expenses, that means they spent most of their less-than-planned-for budget for the year on the Super Bowl LI ad for the Nintendo Switch, which cost 5 million dollars. (Not including the costs to produce it, and however much it cost to license the song from Imagine Dragons.)

Nintendo Switch purchaser age gender distribution household survey male female young adults demographics
Looks like the demographic profile of hardcore Nintendo fans to me.
Source: Page 2 of the Financial Results Briefing.

Somehow I think that the average American watching that Super Bowl ad, if they actually became interested in the Nintendo Switch, lost their interest when they found out that it's almost impossible to buy one. That means those Nintendo Switch sales came from, y'know, diehard Nintendo fans.

Nintendo's projection to sell 10 million more Nintendo Switch systems by next year would basically put the Nintendo Switch, in one year and a month, at about the same number of consoles the Wii U sold over its shortened lifespan. Poor Wii U.

And now for a...

FAKE NEWS ALERT!

CNBC author Chris Morris is reporting that the Nintendo Switch has sold more in one month than the Wii U has sold in its entire first year. This is easily proven wrong:


Nintendo Wii U Switch hardware first fiscal year sales chart comparison
Look how the left-most blue bar (Wii U sales) is actually higher than the red bar (Nintendo Switch sales).
Source: Nintendo's super-awesome chart generator allowing you to compare unit sales.

The Wii U released in November of 2012, so by March 2013, it would be less than half a year in. Between November 2012 and the end of March 2013 (again, LESS than a year), the Nintendo Wii U had sold 3.45 million units, compared to the Nintendo Switch's 2.74 million units. To suggest that the Nintendo Switch has sold MORE units in one month than the Nintendo Wii U had sold in one year is absolutely moronic fake news, but that's to be expected from an outfit such as CNBC.

To be clear, the guy's analysis was taking the Wii U's total cumulative sales (13.56 million), dividing it by five (2.712 million), and saying that since the Nintendo Switch sold 2.74 million in one month, it outsold the Wii U's first year. His analysis assumes that the Wii U sold the exact same number of units every year, and as you can see from the above chart, that's clearly not true.

Update 5/1/2017: Chris Morris has issued a correction to his article, which you can see at the live link here.  /end update

Anyway, if you want new software news, there isn't any to report. It's just nice to see that the projected release dates for Nintendo's first-party software titles for the Nintendo Switch all appear to be worldwide.

Nintendo Switch announced First-Party Titles financial results briefing 2017
If you're going to make a 3x3 table, you want to be able to fill it in with nine things.
Source: Page 12 of the Financial Results Briefing.

What of Nintendo's mobile unit? Nintendo directly says that Pokémon GO lead to Sun and Moon's amazing sales numbers. It also appears that smart-device and royalty income has surpassed “other” as a revenue driver (other being amiibo, Virtual Console content, and things like the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition). Nebulously, Nintendo stated they're going to continue their smart-device efforts. That's it. Nothing specific said.

As for Yooka-Laylee? It doesn't even show up under Upcoming Third-Party Software Lineup. No one knows anything about it, not even corporate Nintendo! That doesn't mean it won't come out for the Nintendo Switch at all like I think, but... there appears to be no set expectations.
 

Ludwig hopes to be one of the new 10 million Nintendo Switch owners between now and the end of March 2018. Surely that should be enough stock for anyone who really wants a Nintendo Switch to obtain one, right? Oh, by the way, don't forget that Round 13 of the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program ends tomorrow night!


That dedicated New Nintendo 2DS XL thoughts article is here!
While stock is still very scarce, Ludwig did manage to be a new Nintendo Switch owner before March 2018.
The Nintendo Switch sold more in four months than the Wii U did in five. That's REAL news.
Ten million Switch goal? It's been revised up to fourteen million.
It's now fifteen million.
Here's the Fiscal Year ending March 2018 article. More great Switch sales. 

8 comments :

  1. More people bought Breath of the Wild for the Switch than THE SWITCH ITSELF?! Insane is DEFINITELY the exact right word for the situation. Holy shlamoley!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I blame those Limited Edition versions of the game.

      Delete
  2. I uh... I bought two. My niece will probably get a switch for Switchmas- er Christmas, and I didn't want to listen to the dum-dums anymore about how a Switch wasn't actually that hard to find, and how Zelda wasn't going to sell out either. So far, those dum-dums have been found to be either lying, or truly delusional. Maybe they're not getting enough water. Hmm.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wait wait wait WHAT.

      ...can I have one?

      Delete
    2. Sorry, two Zeldas! My brother is planning to preorder a switch by October this holiday, but I've been telling him to plan ahead.
      He really doesn't believe me! Those things are incredibly hard to get, I had to wait until the 28th to get mine.
      Also the Ebay and AMAZON sellers are just common roadside robbers! 100 dollars minimum upcharge!

      Delete
    3. Let's see... searching "Nintendo Switch" on Amazon gives that 100 dollars extra, but all the games including Zelda are nice and normally priced!

      Delete
  3. Can i get a 3DS e shop card code im 12 and i really want Lucas,Roy and ryu in smash4 pls im begging you ;-;

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. People under 13 are legally not allowed on KoopaTV.org. Please leave and never come back.

      Delete

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