Today Nintendo announced its financial results for the first half of the fiscal year, which ended on September 30th, 2017.
On top of an update on shipments of Switch consoles and the 3DS family of systems, we get to see that the Kyoto-based console manufacturer and published concluded the first six months of the year with all the relevant figures in the black.
On top of that, all figures showcased a very significant increase year-on-year.
The press release also included a breakdown of the performance of all areas of the business. In particular, Splatoon 2 reached 3.61 million shipments worldwide.
“During the six months ended September 30, 2017, for Nintendo Switch, Splatoon 2 released in July gained popularity both in Japan and overseas, with 3.61 million units sold globally. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and ARMS also both sold well after their releases in April and June, respectively. All told, the sales volume for the Nintendo Switch hardware and software during this period came to 4.89 million units and 22.02 million units respectively.
Sales of the Nintendo 3DS family were given an increase with the global release of New Nintendo 2DS XL in June and July.
Hardware sales came in at 2.86 million units (5% increase on a year-on-year basis). Despite firm sales of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia and Metroid: Samus Returns, overall software sales were 13.82 million units (28% decrease on a year-on-year basis).In addition, Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Super NES Classic Edition was off to a good start following its September launch (launched on October 5 in Japan). We also made moves to expand our amiibo line, by launching the new Splatoon series amiibo.
Our amiibo sales were approximately 5.10 million units for figure-type and approximately 2.80 million units for card-type.
Download sales were increased in particular by Nintendo Switch software, pushing total download sales up to 22.8 billion yen (55% increase on a year-on-year basis).For smart devices, many consumers are continuing to enjoy Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes, released during the previous fiscal year. Our smart device and IP related income was 17.9 billion yen (426% increase on a year-on-year basis).
With this background, our total sales reached 374.0 billion yen (of which overseas sales were 272.3 billion yen or 72.8% of the total sales). Operating profit came to 39.9 billion yen, ordinary profit was 69.5 billion yen, and profit attributable to owners of parent reached 51.5 billion yen.”
On top of that, we also get a few handy paragraphs describing the outlook for the full fiscal year, which will end by March 31st, 2018. It’s worth mentioning that the forecast for both Switch sales and financials was sharply increased today.
“For Nintendo Switch, we plan to release Super Mario Odyssey in October both in Japan and overseas. We are planning to release Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in December, and other big titles in the months ahead, including titles from other software publishers.
For Nintendo 3DS, we will be launching new colors and special designs for New Nintendo 2DS XL, and we also have new software titles slated for release, including Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon scheduled for launch in November both in Japan and overseas.
In our smart device business, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, our new game application, will be introduced first in Australia on October 25, with distribution to the rest of the world scheduled for late November.”
If you want to compare this quarter’s financial results with the previous quarter, which ended on June 30th, you can check out our dedicated article from the end of July.