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Japanese video game maker Nintendo continues to reap the benefits of the corona crisis. In the first half of its broken fiscal year (April-March), the company made a profit of 213.1 billion yen (1.73 billion euro), more than three times more than in the same period last year (62 billion yen). Sales increased by three-quarters to 769.5 billion yen.<!– –>
Nintendo’s success was partly driven by the launch in July and September of two new games in the ‘Super Mario Bros.’ Series. In addition, ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’, released in March, continues to score well “without losing momentum”. During the first half of the new fiscal year, the game was sold 14.27 million times. “That contributed significantly to the overall growth of software sales and boosted hardware sales,” Nintendo said.
Hardware
On the hardware side, sales of the Switch console rose from just under 5 million units in the first half of the previous financial year to 8.4 million now. Launched last September, the Switch Lite sold 4.2 million units from April to September. Nintendo now expects to sell 24 million consoles in the full fiscal year, compared to 19 million previously.<!– –>
Bright future
The results boost Nintendo’s outlook for the rest of the fiscal year. It now expects revenue of 1.4 trillion yen (11.4 billion euro) and an operating profit of 450 billion yen (3.7 billion euro), which would be better than the previous fiscal year. Until now, the Japanese had assumed less turnover and profit: this fall Nintendo will face competition from rivals Sony and Microsoft, who are launching the new generation of their Playstation and Xbox game consoles.
As a result of the corona crisis, which means that people are more at home, the game industry is experiencing a boom. Activion Blizzard – the maker of games such as ‘Call of Duty’, ‘World of Warcraft’ and ‘Candy Crush’ – reported a significant increase in turnover last week.
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