30% drop in hardware revenue, coupled with declining game sales, forces Nintendo to cut full-year forecast again

Nintendo has released its financial report for the nine-month period ended December 31, 2024. The Japanese company recorded declines across all key business metrics.

Super Mario Party Jamboree

Financial highlights

According to its earnings presentation, Nintendo reached ¥956.2 billion ($6.16 billion) in net sales in Q1-Q3 FY25, down 31.4% compared to the same period last year.
Operating profit fell 46.7% year-over-year ¥247.5 billion ($1.6 billion), while net profit was down 41.9% to ¥237.1 billion ($1.52 billion).
76.5% of all Nintendo sales came from overseas markets. The Americas accounted for 43.6% of the total, followed by Europe (25.3%) and Japan (23.5%).
The share of digital sales continue to grow. They now account for 51% of the company’s total net revenue, up 2.9 percentage points from the same period last year.

Nintendo once again revised its full-year revenue forecast, lowering it from ¥1.28 trillion ($8.23 billion) to ¥1.19 trillion ($7.65 billion). It now also expects its operating profit to reach ¥280 billion ($1.8 billion) in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, down 22% from the previous outlook of ¥360 billion ($2.3 billion).
The company cited the sales trend through the latest nine-month period and the continued decline in hardware revenue, as well as a “reevaluation of the assumed exchange rate” amid the weakness of the yen, as key factors influencing the revised forecast. In addition, 2023 results were driven by strong performances from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario Bros. Wonder, with no new major hits like those in the current fiscal year.

Nintendo’s hardware and game sales in Q1-Q3 FY25

In the nine-month period, Nintendo Switch sales reached 9.54 million units, down 30.6% year-over-year. The OLED model remained the most popular version, with over 5 million units sold.
Switch’s lifetime sales surpassed 150 million units. It remains the third best-selling console of all time, behind only Nintendo DS (154 million) and PlayStation 2 (160 million).
Game sales fell 24.4% year-over-year to 123.98 million copies. Overall, Nintendo had 19 million-seller titles in Q1-Q3, including 12 first-party games.

Super Mario Party Jamboree was the best-selling first-party release in the nine-month period, with 6.17 million copies sold. It is followed by Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (5.38 million), The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (3.91 million), and Nintendo Switch Sports (2.63 million).
The number of annual paying users reached 129 million as of December 31, 2024, up from 127 million in the same period last year.