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What just happened? Nintendo's sales and profits plummeted in the fiscal first quarter, attributed to a year-over-year drop in Switch hardware and software sales. For the three-month period ending June 30, net sales dipped 46.5 percent compared to the same period a year earlier – from 461.3 billion yen to 246.6 billion yen. Profit, meanwhile, slid from 253 .7 billion yen down to 113.4 billion yen, a drop of 55.3 percent year over year.
Nintendo sold 2.1 million Switch consoles during the three-month period. That is 46.3 percent fewer than the 3.91 million units moved during the same period in 2023. The OLED Switch model saw the largest decline, down 56.1 percent. The original Switch was the strongest seller, down only 18.4 percent year on year.
Software sales also took a turn south. In the year-ago quarter, Nintendo sold 52.21 million games versus just 30.64 million units in the most recent three-month period – a decline of 46.3 percent.
Nintendo said last year's solid performance was due in part to the launch of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, blockbuster titles in their own right. There were "no such special factors" this time around, although Nintendo did release a couple of new games in the quarter including Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door in May and Luigi's Mansion 2 HD in June. Both have already sold over a million copies.
The Switch is now in its eighth year so it is not at all surprising that hardware sales are slowing. As the handheld approaches the end of its run as Nintendo's flagship, some are no doubt opting to save up and wait for its successor rather than invest in a dated device.
The second-gen Switch was originally expected to launch later this year but according to multiple reports, it has been pushed back to early 2025. It remains to be seen if Nintendo will reconsider those plans based on slowing sales of the original.
Image credit: Aleks Dorohovich, Connor Moyle