Nintendo confirms it will announce its next console ‘this fiscal year’

Nintendo has confirmed it will announce its next-generation console during its current fiscal year, ending March 2025.

In a statement published alongside its financial results, president Shuntaro Furukawa said the company would also hold a Nintendo Direct this June, but claimed it would not include information on the new console, suggesting hardware news would come later.

“This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year,” he said.

“It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be holding a Nintendo Direct this June regarding the Nintendo Switch software lineup for the latter half of 2024, but please be aware that there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during that presentation.”

In its financial results for the year ended March 2024 published Tuesday, Nintendo confirmed it had sold 15.7 million Switch consoles – just beating its forecast of 15.5 million – for a total of 141.32 million to date.

The company projected console sales would fall 14% to 13.5m for the current fiscal year, ending March 2025. It expects net profit to fall by 38.9% (490bn yen to 300bn yen).

THE BEST-SELLING SWITCH GAMES

*As of March 31, 2024 (compared to Dec 2023)

1. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 61.97m (+1.39m)
2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 45.36m (+0.57m)
3. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 34.22m (+0.55m)
4. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 31.85m (+0.24m)
5. Super Mario Odyssey – 27.96m (+0.31m)
6. Pokemon Sword/Shield – 26.27m (+0.1m)
7. Pokémon Scarlet & Violet – 24.92m (+0.56)
8. Super Mario Party – 20.66m (+0.32m)
9. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – 20.61m (+0.33m)
10. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 17.45 (+0.45m)

If Switch hits those sales targets, it will be close to beating Nintendo DS (154m) and PlayStation 2 (~160m) as the best-selling console in history.

Dr Serkan Toto, CEO of Tokyo-based game industry consultancy Kantan Games, told VGC that Switch could have some strong software planned for later this year, based on its hardware sales forecast.

“You never know with Nintendo, but it looks like they’re treating 2024 as a bridge year before the new console comes out,” he said. “13.5 million units is a very aggressive target for hardware sales that late in the life cycle, so it either has some bangers to be released this fiscal or it will finally cut prices at some point in the near future.

“Nintendo announcing the new hardware via X is an on-brand quirky move but also shows the company understands its fans out there have been wanting at least some sort of news for quite some time now. I am still surprised president Furukawa formally acknowledged the existence of the device that early as Nintendo has a lot of work to do selling the current model until at least March 2025.”

In a typical statement covering its forecast for the fiscal year ahead (ending March 2025), Nintendo said it would continue to “convey the appeal of Nintendo Switch” and “continually release new offerings” so consumers keep using the console.

Switch is now in its seventh year on the market, and the expectation is that Nintendo will launch a successor console early next year.

For the 12 months ended March 31, 2024, Nintendo reported operating profits of 528.9 bn yen, which is up 4.9% on the previous fiscal year. Net sales were up 4.4%, from 1,601bn yen to 1,671bn yen.

For FY24, Switch console sell-in was down 12.6% year-on-year. 28% of those hardware sales were in Japan, behind North America (35.15%), but ahead of Europe (24.8%).

This continues to be unusually strong performance for a console that’s surely very close to the end of its lifespan, but Switch hardware sales are clearly in decline, especially in the major markets outside of Japan (where sales actually increased this year).

In software, Princess Peach: Showtime! Debuted with 1.22m units, and Mario vs. Donkey Kong 1.12 million units. Super Mario Bros. Wonder sales increased by around 1.5 million units to 13.44 lifetime sales, and Super Mario RPG increased by about 0.17 million to 3.14 million units.

Looking ahead, Nintendo said: “We have other titles planned for release, such as Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (May) and Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD (June). Other software publishers also plan to release a wide variety of titles, and we will work to invigorate the platform by supplementing existing titles with a continuous stream of new titles and add-on content.”

The company also confirmed that its Kyoto Nintendo Museum, originally planned to open in Spring, would now open in the autumn.