September 30, 2020 Nintendo Quarterly Financial Update

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Big bucks. (Or yen.)

We (to the extent we're on this journey) are halfway through Nintendo's fiscal year, which they're calling Fiscal Year 2021 Quarter 2. The big top-line number is that their net sales are up 73.3% compared to Fiscal Year 2020 Quarter 2, which was itself deemed glowingly positive. In other words, big improvement driven by the likes of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. They're even increasing their projected forecast for the end of March 2021 (the end of Fiscal Year 2021 Quarter 4) by 16.7% more revenue, and plan to sell 5 million more Nintendo Switch units than what they promised six months ago.

There's no questions and answers (yet?) associated with this financial disclosure or the explanatory material, and it's pretty boring overall. So here's some individual sales numbers for games that aren't the highest-most sellers that we still get data for (because they're million-plus sellers):

I kicked out New Super Mario Bros. U from the chart because it ruins the scaling.
See the Fiscal Year 2021 Quarter 1 end (or June 30, 2020) for where it last was.
But it has sold 8.32 million copies now.

There's been some discussion over what Nintendo's holiday 2020 game is actually supposed to be. There's no heavy hitter out in the November/December time frame. It's obviously not going to be the likes of Pikmin 3 Deluxe or Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. My theory has been that it's time-limited Super Mario 3D All-Stars, which conveniently expires when Nintendo's fiscal year ends. (You could also say it's Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light with the same logic, but that's not going to be selling five million copies. And if it did, that's still at a tenth of the price point.)

Meanwhile, despite the efforts of its zealous fanbase (including on KoopaTV), Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition is not at all impressing in sales numbers. It got 1.32 million sales between May and the end of June 30... and then only ~80,000 additional sales for the three months after. That's not “evergreen”-level of sales. Even Xenoblade Chronicles 2 sold at a much faster clip (90,000 copies sold from July 1 to September 30 2018... and this was after it already was out for half a year, including the holidays, and with a much smaller Nintendo Switch install base).

Paper Mario: The Origami King has sold nearly three million copies (2.82 million). Good. It's a good game. I haven't written a review of it or anything, but I vouch for it! Expect to see it in KoopaTV's Game of THAT Year 2020 awards. As for Clubhouse Games, I never bought it. Of its 1.81 million copies, Japan is responsible for .80 million, so that's actually a pretty big Japan slant relative to other games. It's probably dead online. I'm still pleased Ring Fit Adventure is selling, too. Hope you can find that in stores.


Let Ludwig know if you find anything particularly interesting from this quarterly update. He's not invested in NTDOY stock, but he used to be, and now wishes he hasn't sold it because it's at its highest price since the Wii days.


The question and answer session that goes along with this update goes here. Investors are curious on why Nintendo sold so much.
Here were the holiday results with December 31, 2020.
Here are next year's September 2021 results. Ring Fit Adventure continues to be amazing.
Here is why some other media outlets are reporting higher sales numbers for Fire Emblem: Three Houses than KoopaTV is.