Nintendo had a firecracker first quarter with profits up 500% thanks to the combination of coronavirus and Animal Crossing.
Coronavirus has been generally bad for the world, but it’s been great for Nintendo. Thanks to everyone being stuck at home with nothing to do but play video games, sales of Switches and Animal Crossing: New Horizons are through the roof. Which is bad–you need your roof to remain impregnable to prevent the virus from getting in.
But it’s good when it’s just a metaphor explaining how ridiculously high the sales figures are for Animal Crossing. Nintendo shipped 10.6 million copies during April, May, and June (which is what Nintendo reports as their first quarter), which brought total shipments to 22.4 million. That beats out Smash Bros. Ultimate, Pokémon Sword & Shield, and Zelda: Breath of the Wild to make New Horizons the second best-selling Switch game behind Mario Kart 8.
It also brought Nintendo profits up by 541.3% compared to the same time in 2019. Profits rose to ¥106.4 billion, or roughly $1 billion USD.
It wasn’t all thanks to New Horizons, though. Some of those dollars were thanks to an increase in Switch sales, which were also spurred on by New Horizons. Nintendo notes that of all the Switches sold during the quarter, over half of them were used to play Animal Crossing: New Horizons as soon as they were turned on.
Ring Fit Adventure was also a big winner, although not as big as Animal Crossing due to the fact that exercise sucks compared to just sitting around and talking to virtual animal people. That said, Ring Fit Adventure moved over 4 million units by the end of July, which wasn’t enough to keep up with demand. Nintendo noted that sales were “so much higher than our forecasts that the global supply has been unable to keep up since release.”
Mobile sales were also a big factor in those profits, with Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp leading the charge thanks to New Horizon’s popularity.
Despite all this, Nintendo expects to end the year with sales down overall 8.3% compared to 2019. Honestly, this forecast seems overly pessimistic, but it is 2020 and pessimism seems to be the rage these days.
Source: GamesIndustry.biz
