Revising estimates downward after the holiday quarter is never the best news, but given the circumstances, it’s not entirely surprising.
Nintendo released its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2024, and while the figures would be impressive for any other quarter, they’re slightly overshadowed by the fact that this marks the Switch’s eighth holiday season.
Let’s break down the numbers, all of which are listed in yen (¥), with the equivalent US dollar amounts based on an exchange rate of ¥155.32 = $1.
Financial Performance:
- Revenue: ¥423.919 billion, approximately $2.787 billion, representing a 27.67% decline compared to last year.
- Operating Income: ¥126.084 billion, about $812 million, showing a drop of 31.60%.
- Ordinary Income: ¥180.017 billion, around $1.159 billion, which pleasingly is up by 42.6%.
- Digital Sales: ¥85.9 billion, roughly $553 million, marking a 33.36% decrease, with digital sales comprising 51% of software sold in the fiscal year.
- Mobile and IP Revenue: ¥18.5 billion, or $119.1 million, down by 8.42%.
Hardware Shipments:
During this quarter, 4.82 million Switch systems were shipped. Breaking that down, 2.62 million were OLED models, 1.52 million were standard editions, and 780,000 were Lite versions. Impressively, the Switch has surpassed the 150 million units shipped mark, putting it on track to overtake the DS sometime in 2025. It still needs to ship another 3.16 million units to achieve this milestone and 9.24 million more to potentially eclipse the PlayStation 2, according to revised figures by Sony from late 2024.
New Software Highlights:
Leading the charge in software sales is "Super Mario Party Jamboree," with 6.17 million units shipped. This game is outpacing the sales of both the 2018 "Super Mario Party" and 2021’s "Mario Party Superstars." Meanwhile, "Mario & Luigi: Brothership" has shipped an impressive 1.84 million copies. Also notable, "The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom," which launched on September 26, has shipped 3.91 million copies.
Catalogue Sales:
"Mario Kart 8 Deluxe" continues to dominate the Switch software scene with 3.06 million units shipped in this quarter alone, reaching a lifetime total of 67.35 million copies. While the top 10 hasn’t changed in order, it looks likely that "Pokemon Scarlet/Violet" may soon swap places with "Sword/Shield" within the next few quarters.
Additional Announcements:
For the second time this fiscal year, Nintendo has had to adjust its forecasts downwards. For hardware and software, the new projections are 11 million systems shipped (down from 12.5 million) and 150 million units of software (previously 160 million). Revenue expectations have been decreased by 7%, operating profit estimates by 22.2%, ordinary profit by 11.9%, and net profit by 10%.
