Nintendo Releases Second Quarter Financial Results for 2024-25 Fiscal Year – Announcement

The relentless march of time has shown its impact once again.

As the business day wound up in Japan today, Nintendo unveiled their financial outcomes for the July to September quarter. For the first time in quite a while, they’ve had to adjust their future projections downward based on these results.

All the numbers here are in yen (¥), but for convenience, I’ve also included the equivalent US dollar figures using a rate of ¥152.224 = $1.

What’s the Financial Health?

• Revenue: ¥276.661 billion (~$1.817 billion), a dip of 19.78% from the previous year.
• Operating income: ¥67.003 billion (~$440 million), showing a decrease of 29.21%.
• Ordinary income: A steep drop to ¥33.631 billion (~$221 million), down 73.36%.
• Digital sales: They came in at ¥79.2 billion (~$520 million), falling by 19.1%. Interestingly, 56.3% of this year’s software was digital.
• Mobile and IP revenue: Brought in ¥16.5 billion (~$108 million), down 28.88%.

Switch Gears: Hardware Insights

The lifetime sales of the Switch have now climbed to 146.04 million, attributed to 2.62 million units shipped this quarter. Breaking it further down: 1.26 million were OLED models, 720,000 were the standard versions, and 640,000 were Switch Lites. The only special edition hardware this quarter was the Echoes of Wisdom-themed Lite.

To surpass the DS in lifetime sales, 7.98 million more systems need to be sold. To catch up to the PlayStation 2, it would take 12.66 million additional units.

Fresh on the Shelves: New Game Launches

Nintendo launched three new titles this quarter, a noticeable increase from last year’s sole release, Pikmin 4. Leading the pack, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom shipped an impressive 2.58 million copies in just five days. Meanwhile, neither Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition nor Emio: The Smiling Man Famicom Detective Club hit the million mark in shipments.

Updates came in on some previous releases too: the remaster of Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door shipped 1.94 million units, while Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD followed with 1.57 million.

Oldies but Goodies: Catalogue Sales

The top 10 list of games remains unchanged, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe rolling up to a total of 64.27 million units shipped during its lifetime. There’s a notable mention here: Scarlet and Violet appear set to overtake Sword and Shield as the second-best-selling entries in the Pokémon series.

Other Key Announcements

Nintendo announced ¥22.4 billion in foreign exchange losses, reversing the ¥30.6 billion gains they reported earlier this year, which accounts for the sharp decline in operating income we’ve seen.

The company has revised several forecasts downward. Revenue expectations are now reduced by 5.2% (to ¥1,280 billion), with operating profit trimmed down by 10% (to ¥360 billion). Projected Switch hardware shipments dropped from 13.5 million to 12.5 million, and software forecasts fell from 165 million to 160 million—acknowledging that sales are naturally slowing as the Switch enters its eighth year.