Nintendo has just revealed it’s 1st Quarter 2023 (start of April to the end of June) financials and things are looking amazing for the house of Mario! The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Legend Of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom did some massive lifting to get the Japanese powerhouse company across to the end zone! In an industry where graphics, resolution, raw power, and framerate are touted to be the end-all be-all, Nintendo is showing that well-crafted IP and having a Disney-esque curation of your products is key to success.
Mario And Zelda Are Still Beloved
Launching halfway through the quarter (May 12th) Tears of the Kingdom has rakes in millions of dollars of revenue for Nintendo with an astounding 18 million units sold in less than 2 months! To give you all some perspective a “successful” AAA game averages about 5 – 10 million units sold to be deemed a success (although this varies by team size and years of development).
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet released back in November of last year and broke the record for the fastest selling Switch game in it’s first week. As of the end of this quarter Scarlet and Violet have a cumulative sales life of 22.6 million units sold, so TotK will have no problem catching up to that with less time on the market.
Similarly The Super Mario Bros. movie broke some sales figures of it’s own. As mentioned by VG247: “Over 168 million people worldwide have seen the Super Mario Bros. Movie as of July 30, and it has earned over $1.34 billion at the box office as of July 26. According to Nintendo, the figure is the “highest ever” for an original film based on a videogame and the second-highest for an animated movie.” Of course, that first highest animated movie would be Frozen 2.
Yours truly at Super Nintendo World in Hollywood.
Nintendo is also seeing synergy across the board with continued sales of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (1.6 million units this past quarter, pretty good for an old game) for a lifetime sales figure of 55.6 million units for that one game alone, that is absurd! Not to mention that their partnership with Universal Studios has also not only helped them, but also helped Comcast with revenue boosts to it’s Japan and California theme parks due to the inclusion of Super Mario World!
Hard Numbers
Mario and Zelda are not the only ones doing ALL the work though, according to Nintendo’s report they are seeing great growth across hardware and software year-over-year! Here are some snippets from the report:
“Turning to the digital business for our dedicated video game platform, digital sales rose 35.9% year-on-year to 119.6 billion yen, helped by the depreciation of the yen combined with good sales of downloadable versions of packaged software for Nintendo Switch and increased sales related to Nintendo Switch Online […]
The end result is that overall sales reached 461.3 billion yen, with sales outside Japan of 369.0 billion yen accounting for 80.0% of that total. Operating profit came to 185.4 billion yen. With the depreciation of the yen in foreign exchange markets, we recorded foreign exchange gains of 47.2 billion yen, with the result that ordinary profit totaled 253.7 billion yen and profit attributable to owners of parent totaled 181.0 billion yen.
For hardware, by continuing to convey the appeal of Nintendo Switch, we try not only to put one system in every home, but several in every home, or even one for every person. Another objective is to continually release new offerings so more consumers keep playing Nintendo Switch even longer and we can maximize hardware sales.”
A Tears of the Kingdom special edition Switch console. Image from CNN.
What Does It Mean For Gamers?
Notice how there is no mention (you can even check out the full report here) of a new Switch model? And honestly why WOULD they shake up what they have going on with a new Switch just yet? Sure, they’ll have to make a new model by 2026, the Switch will be a decade by that point. But you hear many gamers online decrying Nintendo for not having a Switch successor yet.
People will point to Pokemon Scarlet and Violet as proof that the aging hardware is negatively affecting software. Yet gamers completely forget that Fire Emblem Engage and Alien Isolation look terrific running off the hardware. Others will say the Switch is holding back innovation, yet neglect to point out that Tears of the Kingdom has one of the most impressive physics and collisions detection across all video games!
The truth is that Nintendo does not need to rush out a new competitor to the Steam Deck as some have said. It still has plenty of fight left in it for the next two or three years. Nintendo doesn’t need to shake things up just yet and fracture their player base, they still have a bit of time. As long as they are raking in record profits they won’t feel the need to fix what isn’t broken.
What do you guys think? Think we’ll see a Switch successor sooner or later? disagree with this stance? Comment down below. For more gaming takes or just general geeky coverage be sure to check out GeekNewsNow and our Facebook page here. Stay geeky out there!
