Nintendo reports huge profits as Animal Crossing clears 20 million
Platform holder’s profits spike 500% thanks to the Switch exclusive and strong digital sales
Nintendo has reported significant year-on-year growth and confirmed that Animal Crossing: New Horizons has cleared 20 million copies sold.
In its results for the three months ending June 30, the company’s net sales (358bn yen / $3.4bn) doubled year-on-year at 108%, operating income increased by a significant 427% (145bn yen / $1.37bn) and net profit increased by a huge 540% (106bn yen / $1.02bn).
Nintendo Switch hardware cleared 5.5m units sold for the quarter (2.6 of which were the Lite version), which represents a year-on-year sales increase of more than 160%. To date, 61.45m Nintendo Switch consoles have been sold.
In software, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was by far the company’s best performing title, selling 10.63m copies during the quarter and 22.4m units to date.
This is already nearly double the lifetime cumulative sales of 12 million for Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which was the previous best-selling entry in the series.
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Nintendo is now making more digitally than boxed for the first time
The figure means that after little over three months on sale, Animal Crossing is the second highest-selling Nintendo Switch title to date, behind Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (26.74m), which itself continues to show sales momentum with a further 1.97m copies sold during Q1.
Nintendo claimed there was a high ratio of digital sales for New Horizons in multiple regions, averaging around 50% in Japan, the US and Europe. Overall, digital sales accounted for 55.6% of total software sales and grew 229.9% year-on-year.
Other top sellers included Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition (1.32m), Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics (1.03m), Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (1.19m), Ring Fit Adventure (1.17m) and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (1.15m).
In total, software sales grew 123% year-on-year to 50.43 million units, Nintendo said.
In mobile, income grew by 32.7% year-on-year to 13.2 billion yen ($130m), bolstered by record sales and record use of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, which it said benefited from the release New Horizons.
Nintendo has just one first-party title publicly announced for the rest of the year: Pikmin 3 Deluxe, which was revealed on Wednesday.
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