Nintendo Financial Results FY 2019 Briefing

Nintendo has just concluded its financial results meeting for fiscal year ended March 2019. President of Nintendo, Mr. Furukawa, covered a bunch of different areas of the business. The big takeaways are that Nintendo Switch software continues to sell at a fantastic pace and is the biggest profit center for the company. First party Switch games have seen a dramatic uptick for this past fiscal year. The cumulative sell through of software is 70% higher than the previous year. New Super Mario Bros. Deluxe became a million-seller within two weeks after release. Digital sales are also on the rise with this past fiscal year garnering 118.8 billion yen – the first time Nintendo has broken the 100 billion yen mark for digital.

Have you ever wondered what games new Switch owners play first? For the first time ever we’re getting a glimpse of that data from Nintendo. They monitored which games were played on the first day after purchasing a Nintendo Switch between January and March 2019. To no one’s surprise, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate led the way!

Compared to last year the Switch systems have also been selling better, up 23% year-on-year. In Japan the Switch has been selling faster than the Wii. In North America the Switch is outselling the Nintendo DS and 3DS when compared to their first two years on the market (the Wii is in a whole other ballpark due to its lightning in a bottle phenomenon). Europe sees the Switch selling the slowest, with it barely beating out the 3DS for the first two years. Both DS and Wii outsold the Switch in their first two years on the market. If we combine all of the data together the Switch has sold more than the 3DS when time aligned, but hasn’t quite caught up to the DS and it’s unlikely it will catch up to the Wii anytime soon.

Nintendo went on to talk about the next fiscal year (April 1, 2019 – March 31, 2020) and they really didn’t reveal anything too shocking. That being said, it’s nice to see some reaffirmation of prior release schedules and other details holding steady. They say they’re still on track to release all of their first party games that they previously said would release in 2019. That includes: Super Mario Maker 2, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Astral Chain, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Animal Crossing, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and Pokémon Sword & Pokémon Shield. Plus they are still publishing some third-party games, such as: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, Dragon Quest Builders 2, and Dragon Quest XI S in North America. We know from financial statements that they plan on selling 18 million Switch systems and and 125 million pieces of software.

Both Dr. Mario World and Mario Kart Tour are still scheduled to release for mobile devices this summer. On May 21 Mario Kart Tour will get a closed beta for Android users.

Looking forward to E3 2019, Mr. Furukawa reiterated it will be business as usual. “…we plan to continue our practice of the past few years, which is to release a video presentation discussing the games that are planned for release during the fiscal year, provide hands-on opportunities, and so on.”

You can read the full report below!

Craig Majaski

Craig has been covering the video game industry since 1995. His work has been published across a wide spectrum of media sites. He’s currently the Editor-In-Chief of Nintendo Times and contributes to Gaming Age.