Nintendo sees record first quarter profit thanks to Zelda and the Mario movie

engadget.com:

Nintendo just announced its highest first quarter profit ever thanks to sales of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Super Mario Bros. Movie. The company earned 185.44 billion yen ($1.3 billion) on sales of 461.34 billion yen ($3.2 billion), easily battering its previous fiscal Q1 record of 144.7 billion set in 2020, the company revealed in its latest earnings report. 

The numbers on those two properties are impressive. Around the world, 168.10 million people watched The Super Mario Bros. Movie, netting the company $1.349 billion as of July 26th — the highest ever for an original film based on a video game, and the second-highest for an animated film. 

Meanwhile, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has sold 18.51 million copies since it launched in May, while Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold 1.67 million units last quarter. "Sell-through of this one title [Zelda] constitutes approximately half of the first-party software sold this fiscal year," Nintendo said. 

Switch sales were actually up over the same quarter last year to 3.91 million in the last quarter (compared to 3.43 million units last year), with 2.83 million of those being the more expensive OLED model. That rise might be powered in part by Zelda, as buyers sought either a new or better console to play the game. The company has also continually stated that it's goal is to put more than one Switch in every household, and could be starting to deliver on that. At the beginning of its fiscal year, Nintendo called its sales forecast of 15 million Switch consoles "a bit of a stretch," but is on track to achieve that number so far. 

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