September 30, 2019 Nintendo Quarterly Financial Update

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Eat glowingly positive sales numbers!

Well, I looked through Nintendo's financial statements for the quarter ending September 30, 2019. That's six months into their fiscal year, though the whole concept of fiscal years isn't terribly exciting for normal people. 

In terms of stand-out sales figures, 19.01 million people bought Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch (versus 8.44 million on the Wii U), and there are 15.71 million owners of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Splatoon 2 is only at 9.28 million, a mere 260,000 units in 3 months. That's what happens with online-based games when all the new content is done. There's 41.67 million Nintendo Switch systems sold.

The biggest thing here is that 1-2-Switch is finally off the top ten best-selling Nintendo Switch games.
(New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe is at spot 8.)

Ring Fit Adventure, having released in October, doesn't appear in these results. We'll have to wait three months for that. But Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said Ring Fit Adventure is a super important title for Nintendo this year, and spent more time talking about it than, say, Pokémon.

Interesting bit about the Nintendo Switch Lite: Nintendo considers it a huge success, but after its first week being launched, the regular Nintendo Switch was outselling it week-by-week. For whatever reason, 43% of Nintendo Switch Lite purchasers already own a Nintendo Switch. Not sure how so many people could be fooled into something financially stupid, but hopefully it's for members of the family and not for themselves.

Lastly of interest, the 3DS segment sold less stuff than the mobile one. That's not because mobile is doing great—growth was almost flat year-over-year, but the 3DS just collapsed despite Nintendo sacrificing AlphaDream for it.

At least the Switch is doing fantastic.


Ludwig's favourite game on that chart is still Kirby Star Allies, which he gave a full review of as a birthday present to himself. He wishes it would suddenly sell enough to warrant Nintendo disclosing updated numbers, but that probably will never happen.


The article covering the quarter ending June 30, 2019 is over here.
By comparison, the article covering the quarter ending September 30, 2018 discussed mostly Kirby Star Allies.
Don't like Ludwig's questions? How about these ones from investors?
How about some even greater positive sales numbers after the holidays?
Next year's September 30, 2020 article has many more games and many more Switch sales to discuss.