It’s never good to have to revise estimates down after the holiday quarter, but what did you expect?
Nintendo issued their financial results for the 4th calendar quarter of 2024 at the close of business in Japan today, and what would be a high mark for any other quarter is deflated by the fact that it was the Switch’s eighth holiday quarter.
All figures quoted in yen (¥), for comparison the US$ figures are listed based on a rate of ¥155.32 = $1.
Financial Indicators
Revenue: ¥423.919bn (~$2.787bn), down 27.67% year over year
Operating income: ¥126.084bn (~$812m), down 31.60%
Ordinary income: ¥180.017bn (~$1.159bn), up 42.6%
Digital sales: ¥85.9bn (~$553m), down 33.36%, 51% of software in the fiscal year is digital
Mobile and IP revenue: ¥18.5bn (~$119.1m), down 8.42%
Hardware Shipments
4.82m Switch systems were shipped in the quarter, broken down to 2.62m OLED, 1.52m standard, and 780k Lites. The Switch has broken through the 150m units shipped barrier and seems likely to pass the DS at some point in calendar 2025 as it needs another 3.16m systems shipped, with another 9.24m shipments needed to surpass the PlayStation 2 (following updated results issued by Sony late in 2024*).
New Software
Super Mario Party Jamboree was the top seller of the quarter with shipments of 6.17m units; the game is selling faster than both 2018’s Super Mario Party and 2021’s Mario Party Superstars. The other worldwide release published by Nintendo, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, has shipped over 1.84m copies.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (September 26) has also jumped to 3.91m copies shipped.
Catalogue Sales
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has widened its lead in the Switch software race with 3.06m units shipped in the quarter (including bundles) for a new lifetime total of 67.35m copies. The rest of the top 10 can be found here: the order has not changed, but it appears that Pokemon Scarlet/Violet will swap places with Sword/Shield at some point in the next few quarters.
Other Announcements
For the second time this fiscal year, Nintendo has had to revise estimates downwards. For hardware and software the new predicted figures are 11m system shipped (from 12.5) and 150m units of software (previously 160m). Revenue was also lowered by 7%, operating profit by 22.2%, ordinary profit 11.9%, and net profit by 10%.
