The game console manufacturer Nintendo has benefited from the corona crisis with its exit restrictions. The Japanese company sold around 3.3 million of its switch game consoles last quarter, a third more than a year earlier. In the fiscal year ended at the end of March, a good 21 million switch consoles were sold – also thanks to the market launch of a cheaper version in autumn.
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Due to the corona crisis there are bottlenecks in the Switch-Production due to missing components, but that didn’t have a significant impact on the numbers, emphasized Nintendo.
The new game of the series “Animal Crossing” got the best start of a switch game with 13.4 million sales in six weeks. Sales and profits also rose significantly in the usually rather bad quarter after Christmas.
55.7 million switches sold
Nintendo then closed the financial year with a nine percent increase in sales to the equivalent of 11.3 billion euros. The profit even jumped by a third to the equivalent of 2.25 billion euros, as Nintendo announced.
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For the financial year that has now begun, Nintendo expects sales to drop by a good eight percent and a 22 percent drop in profits. One reason is that the crisis is dampening willingness to buy.
In the smartphone app business, in which Nintendo is very cautious not to adversely affect console sales, revenue rose by 11 percent last year to the equivalent of EUR 446 million.
Nintendo has meanwhile sold a total of 55.7 million devices from the Switch console since its market launch three years ago – which is also an important basis for further game sales.
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