Nintendo was prepared to hold out financially this year as sales of its older Switch decline, but things are going a little worse than expected. After selling fewer consoles than it expected in the last two quarters (4.72 million compared to 6.84 million last year), the company lowered its sales forecast from 13.5 million consoles to 12.5 million , a drop of one million units. The company also lowered its sales forecast by 5.2 percent to 1.28 trillion yen ($8.41 billion), thinking it expects the same net profit as last year.
The company posted decent financial results last fiscal year (which ended in March 2024) even though the Switch was first released in 2017. It achieved this largely thanks to the release of the long-awaited The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom game and, to a lesser extent, the launch of the Super Mario Bros. movie.
However, “there were no special factors in the first half of this fiscal year and with Nintendo Switch now in its eighth year since its launch, unit sales of both hardware and software decreased significantly year over year,” the company said in your report. IR Explanatory Materials. However, there were some bright spots, such as a slight increase in Switch sales during the last quarter due to the release of Switch Lite: Hyrule Edition and other included hardware/software releases.
The Switch is the second best-selling Nintendo console of all time after the DS, but it has definitely run its course. That means the company will be betting big on its next-gen Switch 2 console, but it won't be announced until early next year, so it's not likely to see better sales in the near future.
