This week’s Nintendo financial briefings revealed one undeniable fact: the company is having a killer 2017. Between Mario, Zelda, and the red-hot Switch, Nintendo hasn’t had a year this good in a very long time.
A few stats:
Nintendo sold over two million copies of Super Mario Odyssey in just three days, which is remarkable. Equivalent global numbers for the last 3D Mario game, Super Mario 3D World, aren’t available, but back in December 2013, Nintendo said that it sold 215,000 copies of the Wii U game in North America.
Nintendo sold two million Super Nintendo Classics. For comparison, the company sold roughly 200,000 NES Classics during that system’s launch month, although it’s safe to say that number would have been higher if Nintendo had made more of them.
Nintendo has sold 7.63 million Switches, and it hasn’t even been on sale for a single Black Friday yet.
Nintendo has already sold 4.7 million copies of Breath of the Wild, 4.42 million copies of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, 3.61 million copies of Splatoon 2, and 1.37 million copies of 1-2 Switch.
Perhaps the company’s only bust was Super Mario Run, which Nintendo says has been downloaded 200 million times but has not hit an “acceptable profit point,” because people who play games on their phone don’t like downloading free games only to be told that they have to pay. Fortunately for Nintendo’s mobile division, Tom Nook is coming.
Comments
29 responses to “Nintendo Is Having A Very Good Year”
Good! Love em. Deserve to have success with all their new and wonderful kit.
Not to mention, even in 2017, Pokemon Go is still raking in the cash. The addition of Legendary raids gave the app it’s most profitable day ever on 23-07-17 with 5.8 million. Not all of that goes to the big N, but enough would to make it a pretty good day in the office.
They own a third of the Pokemon Company which would get a slice of the profits. So they would get a bit of that? Google and Niantic also get a cut of it all. I don’t think it’s something that would rate well.
Not to mention the user numbers have dropped massively, despite one big profitable day.
Actually, three of the five highest earning days in the entire run has been in 2017.
Losing that many players won’t have affected revenue as much as you’d initially think. From what I’ve read around the internet (I stopped playing at the start of the year), the raid system has raised the priority to buy things much more, meaning even though the player base has shrunk, the average spend per person has gone up enough to counteract that.
I’m not saying Nintendo can pack up the console department and live the rest of their lives on Pokemon Go money, but it’s still made them millions of dollars this year, nothing to sneeze at.
Wow, that’s pretty interesting to be honest. Among my group of friends who were pretty hardcore ingress nerds, then started playing PoGo, only 1 is left. We all put in a fair bit of money to it as well over the course of the almost year that we played it.
Kind of glad I’m out if paying is suddenly so vital to get stuff.
Why are there ~3 million people that have a switch and not Zelda?
I have a Switch and not Zelda.
I’ll probably get downvoted for this but I don’t have the nostalgia for the Zelda series.
It was the first ever Zelda game I ever bought and played, and I was abolsutely not dissappointed. Now I get the love.
I know there would be people that have a switch and no Zelda, but those numbers just seem strange. People buy the console, and it was really the only option for a starter game for a good few months. Its also the main reason a lot of people bought one.
For a large chunk of the year people are going to have bought either Zelda or Mario Kart, if not both. Given the massively positive reaction to Zelda, I just expected that number to be closer to the number of consoles sold is all.
BotW, more than any other Zelda in modern times is a Zelda game that did NOT try to cash on nostalgia. Is its own, great game.
This game breaks most nostalgia, even the default green clothes and is just an awesome adventure. Not getting this because you don’t like Zelda is like not getting Mario Kart because you played Gran Turismo once and didn’t like it.
I got a Switch a couple of weeks ago and have Mario Odysee, Mario/Rabbids, 1-2-Switch and ARMS. I’m sure I’ll get Zelda one day but it isn’t a priority.
For the record I haven’t played Witcher 3 despite owning a PS4 since day one either.
I forget what the numbers were last time they were brought up but from memory there was a sizeable chunk who got it on Wii U.
As I understood it, the 4.7m is the Switch sales. Wii U seems to be around a third of the Switch sales on top of that, so roughly another 1.5m maybe.
Unfortunately I am one of them. Having a 6 month old does not bode well for a game you can sink 100+ hours into. The moment I get a weekend to myself it’s on the “BUY NOW” list.
But doing well right now with Mario – it has no problem with short stints. I got 4 moons in a 20 minute play today,
Not everyone likes zelda.
I’m still in a coma since the Metroid announcement. *droooooooooooooooooool*
Wonder what happened to that guy from here that said he was going to pick up one of the many half-price Switch’s that everyone was going to be selling once they’d got sick of BOTW and there was nothing else to play?
Edit: Sorry, he wasn’t going to buy one, he was waiting for someone he knew to ‘waste their money’ on the ‘gimmick’ so he could play the one game worth playing.
For more hilarious comments about how shit the Switch is, check these out:
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/10/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-nintendo-switch/
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/03/nintendo-switch-the-kotaku-review/
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/01/the-nintendo-switch-will-cost-469-95/
To be fair, with Nintendo’s track record of the wii u, it was perfectly acceptable to think Nintendo would fuck it up again, making this strategy the smart one.
I played Botw for about a month, and nothing till kart for a few weeks, then nothing till Mario. No interest in splatoon 1.5 or arms.
But the switch is good hardware. I think it’s going the same path as the wii u.
Too many major IP games in the first year, and outside of Metroid and Pokémon, I think it’s going to be a lean few years filled with indie trash, and 2nd and 3rd tier games like treasure tracker, Kirby, yoshi etc.
Every console comes out with not many games.
The Switch has over 200 now so it’s got heaps. I have more games than I can play for awhile now and they keep pumping them out.
https://i.imgur.com/lGqTG22.jpg
Nintendo is smashing it this year.
Love my Switch, I was a very late adopter for the Wii U and haven’t put half as many hours into the games on there as I have with the few Switch games I have. I was on board with the Switch day 1 and haven’t regretted a moment of it. I can only hope the sales lead to greater third party support because that’s always been a bit of a sore point for Nintendo. The idea of games like Doom or Skyrim on the go still amazes me so I’d love to see more ports and original IP’s from third parties.
Also Tom Nook is already here for Australia.
Apparently a bunch of Japanese studios that scoffed at the switch are not pushing full steam into development now that it’s turned out so popular.
I’m happy for Ninty’s success.
As someone who purchased the Switch more than 6 months after launch, I say good for them. The Nintendo Switch is a very solid console and one that has the certain appeal that the PS4 and Xbox One doesn’t have. We haven’t seen the end of Nintendo’s rise because they haven’t brought out the “BIG” games for the Switch, mainly Pokemon, Animal Crossing, etc.
Smash, Mario, Mario Kart and Zelda are the big games for any Nintendo console generation.
A full blown pokemon game is an unknown but I’m thinking it will be huge also.
But we’ve already got some of the biggest ones.
Rocket League in 2 weeks too. YYYYEEEEEHHHHAAAAAWWWWWW!!!!
I dont like the switch nor any of the games on it. But congrats none the less to them for doing better. Some things still need improvement but nintendo is slowly changing.
Serious question – why are you on a games website if you don’t like games? There are over 200 games on it and if you claim you don’t like any (which I don’t believe) what are you doing here?