Zelda and Mario boost Nintendo to record profit

Nintendo just had a bumper quarter thanks to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, as well as the Super Mario Bros. Movie. “Both sales and profits were notably large for a first quarter” the company noted in today’s earnings release, which covers the three months through June 30th. 

Net sales stood at ¥461.3 billion (around $3.2 billion), a 50 percent increase versus last year, while operating profit rose 82.4 percent to ¥185.4 billion (around $1.3 billion). Bloomberg notes that it’s the highest first-quarter profit recorded by the company, beating its previous 2020 high set in the the first year of the pandemic just after the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. 

The benefits of the release of Zelda and the Mario movie were felt directly and indirectly. Tears of the Kingdom sold 18.51 million units during Nintendo’s first quarter and is now the ninth best-selling Nintendo game for the console. Meanwhile, the Mario movie helped increase Nintendo’s “mobile and IP related income” by 190.1 percent versus last year. The Super Mario Bros. Movie has been a huge success, taking over $1 billion at the box office worldwide. Nintendo’s earnings release adds that the movie helped promote sales of its existing Mario games.

While sales of Switch consoles were still up compared to the same quarter last year (3.91 million units versus 3.43 million units), the consensus is that this hardware is nearing the end of its life, and Nintendo’s release calendar for the rest of the year is looking significantly leaner. The big question is when Nintendo might announce a Switch successor. Earlier this week VGC reported that a new console is planned for the second half of 2024, and that some of Nintendo’s software partners have already received development hardware for the forthcoming device.