Nintendo Switch is on track to break a historic record: we analyze the data from Nintendo’s results

A while ago we brought you the news of the day: Nintendo has officially announced that the successor to the current Switch will be released during the current fiscal year. If you want to know what that means in terms of dates, read our previous article.

Now we are going to focus on everything we have been able to deduce from some financial results that say a lot about what Nintendo Switch means for the Japanese company. If it continues like this, Nintendo Switch could become the best-selling console in history.

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All the data from Nintendo’s fiscal report 2023/2024

Nintendo Co., based in Kyoto, recorded a 13% increase in its profits for the fiscal year ending in March, driven by strong demand for Switch software such as the video game The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

• Nintendo’s net profit for the fiscal year ending in March 2024 amounted to 490.6 billion yen (3.0 billion dollars), compared to the 432.7 billion yen of the previous fiscal year.
• And annual sales increased by 4%, reaching 1.67 trillion yen (11.0 billion dollars), with almost 80% coming from outside of Japan.
• In addition to “The Legend of Zelda”, which sold 20.6 million units worldwide in the fiscal year, “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” sold 13.4 million units and “Pikmin 4” sold nearly 3.5 million units, according to Nintendo.

The release one year ago of the movie “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” also helped sales, as this movie became one of the top three most viewed movies of the year and its influence was massive worldwide.

The weakness of the yen against the dollar also helped, increasing the value in yen of the overseas income of Japanese exporters like Nintendo. The average exchange rate of the US dollar has been 151 Japanese yen during the last fiscal year, compared to 133 yen in the previous fiscal year.

Nintendo, which did not break down quarterly figures, was less optimistic about its financial results for the fiscal year ending in March 2025, and forecasted that net profits would fall to 300 billion yen ($1.9 billion).

Nintendo has sold over 141 million Nintendo Switch consoles, 15.7 million of them during the last fiscal year, which is impressive considering they were expecting to sell around 14 million.

Those sales tend to decrease gradually over the years, but Nintendo expects to sell another 13.5 million consoles during this last fiscal year, which would bring the console to reach 155 million units sold, allowing them to surpass the sales record of the PlayStation 2.

Nintendo is also planning a new movie, now starring Zelda and Link, which will be released worldwide in April 2026. In other words, Nintendo has no plans to slow down.