Nintendo's Net Sales Drop 34 Percent in H1/25, Full-Year Outlook Revised Downward

Compared to last year, sales of Nintendo Switch hardware and software have dropped significantly, despite nine games having sold more than one million units on the platform during this period. As a result, Nintendo has lowered its forecast for the year. No information was given on the successor to the Switch.

Nintendo has released its report for the second quarter and first half of the current fiscal year. Net sales decreased 34.3% year-on-year to ¥523.2 billion (€3.2 billion), operating profit decreased 56.6% year-on-year to ¥121.5 billion (€733 million), and net income attributable to owners of parent decreased 59.9% year-on-year to ¥108.6 billion (€655 million). According to the company, this is due to the continued weakness of the yen and lower sales of games and hardware, bearing in mind that the previous year was also particularly strong. Nintendo goes on to explain: "Although there was a proportional decrease in first-party software sales, the gross profit margin increased by 1.5 percentage points year-on-year to 60.8%. This is due to factors such as a proportional increase in digital sales relative to overall sales and a decrease in the proportion of hardware unit sales of Nintendo Switch ‒ OLED Model, which has a lower profit margin than the other models in the Nintendo Switch family."

Due to the decline in hardware and software sales, Nintendo has adjusted its forecast for the fiscal year. Hardware sales have been reduced by one million to 12.5 million units and software sales have been reduced by five million to 160 million units compared to the original forecast. The net sales forecast is reduced by 5.2 per cent to ¥1,280 billion (€7.7 billion) and the operating profit by 10 per cent to ¥360 billion (€2.17 billion).

Nintendo Switch is slowly but surely showing its age, with Nintendo planning to unveil the next generation of consoles by the end of March 2025. Unsurprisingly, the company gave no indication of a successor to the Switch during its earnings presentation.

H1/FY25

In Q2 (July to September), Nintendo sold 2.63 million Switch consoles, just under 310,000 fewer than in Q2/24. In the previous quarter of this fiscal year, 2.1 million consoles were sold. This means that there are now 146.04 million Switch consoles in circulation worldwide, with 35.6 million in Japan, 56.11 million in the Americas, 37.52 million in Europe and 16.79 million in 'other regions'. The most popular model is the standard Switch with 94.7 million, followed by the OLED model (26.83 million) and the Lite model (24.51 million). By comparison, the Nintendo DS has sold 154 million units, the PlayStation 2 155 million (official figure) and according to Jim Ryan in the PlayStation Podcast almost 160 million.

Nintendo sold 39.64 million games in Q2/25, more than five million fewer than the previous year, which was particularly strong due to the after-effects of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (May 2023) and the Super Mario Bros. Movie boost. There were no such effects in the first half of this fiscal year, but there were still several games that sold over a million copies. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, released at the end of September, sold 2.58 million units, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, released in May, has sold 1.94 million units, and Luigi's Mansion 2 HD, released in June, has sold 1.57 million units. From April to the end of September, Nintendo sold 2.31 million units of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (total: 64.27 million), 1.26 million units of Nintendo Switch Sports (total: 14.37 million) and 1.09 million units of Animal Crossing: New Horizons (total: 46.45 million). The number of million-selling titles this fiscal year reached nine, six from Nintendo and three from other publishers. Since the console's launch, 1.306 billion games have been sold on the platform.

Nintendo on digital sales in the first half of the year: "Digital sales for the first half of the fiscal year decreased by 26.5% year-on-year to 159.9 billion yen, but as a proportion of total software sales for our dedicated video game platform, digital sales increased 6.1 percentage points to 56.3% (...) While there was a decrease in total software sales, a simultaneous increase in sales of download-only software as well as stable sales related to Nintendo Switch Online caused the proportion of digital sales to increase year-on-year."

Top Ten First-Party Switch Games

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 64.27 million
Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 46.45 million
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 35.14 million
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 32.29 million
Super Mario Odyssey - 28.50 million
Pokémon Sword / Shield - 26.44 million
Pokémon Scarlet / Violet - 25.69 million
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - 21.04 million
Super Mario Party - 20.98 million
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe - 17.77 Million

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