Zelda sales breakout juices Nintendo's aging Switch
JAPAN’S Nintendo on Thursday (Aug 3) said it sold 3.9 million units of its Switch console in the April to June quarter, exceeding sales in the same period a year earlier, boosted by the runaway success of its latest Zelda title.
Investor sentiment has been buoyed by the breakout success of the The Super Mario Bros Movie, which leads this year’s global box office ranking, and praise for video game The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom which went on sale in May.
Nintendo said it sold 18.5 million units of Tears of the Kingdom in the first quarter. The game has a score of 96 out of 100 on reviews aggregator Metacritic, indicating universal acclaim.
Sales in its business related to mobile and intellectual property tripled to 31.8 billion yen (S$298.6 million) due to the success of the Mario movie, Nintendo said, which has also helped to drive sales of games featuring the moustachioed plumber.
The results underscore Nintendo’s success in extending the life of the aging Switch system, which has sold almost 130 million units, and using its roster of popular characters to boost revenue beyond the core gaming business.
The market is focused on the timing of a potential successor for the hybrid home-portable Switch, which has received incremental updates including a handheld-only version, but is now in its seventh year on the market.
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“I think they’re going to ride out this fiscal year and squeeze the last bit of juice out of this system, and then establish excitement for the new hardware sometime next year,” said Serkan Toto, founder of consultancy Kantan Games.
The Kyoto-based gaming firm maintained its full-year forecast for the console of 15 million units, which would be a 16.5 per cent decline on a year earlier.
“(It) is not a goal that we will be able to achieve easily,” Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said in May.
First-quarter operating profit leapt 82 per cent on a year earlier to 185.4 billion yen, with sales of first-party software at record highs.
Unlike previous periods of thin games supply, Nintendo also has a robust pipeline of titles, with Detective Pikachu Returns and Super Mario Bros Wonder due for release later this year.
Nintendo’s share price has jumped since the Switch went on sale in major markets in March 2017, outperforming the benchmark Nikkei’s 91 per cent return over the same period. REUTERS
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