December 31, 2019 Nintendo Quarterly Financial Update

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - And we thought we were done writing 2019.

Quite recently, Nintendo revealed the financial results for the end of the third quarter for the fiscal year ending March 2020, or whatever their weird way of wording it is. Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo's president, had another boring investor briefing that was about the very-familiar themes about Nintendo IP access expansion through stores and theme parks you'll likely never be able to go to, the need for incentives for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers to renew, and the Nintendo Switch itself is performing great, with 52.48 million consoles sold, which is over 10 million in three months.

Here are some game unit sales in my very selective long-running chart of below-top-tier million sellers:

The chart from the September 30, 2019 article had typographical errors in it, which are now resolved!

 
Let's be honest: I just wanted to know how much Ring Fit Adventure sold, which is only 2.17 million units. I think that's a low number, compared to what other Switch games are doing. Of course, Ring Fit Adventure has the constraint of being a physical-only title with supply constraints—Furukawa notes it's sold out in Japan, and digital-version titles are increasing in their proportion. He also notes that Ring Fit Adventure is responsible for increased daily Nintendo Switch interaction, and that's true in my experience. Even if I think it's frustrating.

There's nothing else really interesting to say here, except Nintendo plans to sell more Nintendo Switch than previously projected, and less Nintendo 3DS, which is totally irrelevant by now. There also won't be a Nintendo Switch hardware revision in 2020. ...Though I'd remind you not to trust that.


Ludwig thinks you should buy Ring Fit Adventure.  He's sad that most of the games on that graph won't get any sales figures updates anytime soon, since the only reason so many games got an update is because the quarter covered the holiday season, and Nintendo only discloses numbers if a game sold at least one million units in that quarter.



For Nintendo's quarterly financial update for the quarter ending September 30, 2019, see here.
Ludwig wrote the 2018 version of this here.
What were investors asking Nintendo after this? Find out here, but note they didn't get good answers.
Here is the next update, with it ending March 2020!
And here is the 2020 version of this. Even better numbers than 2019.