Nintendo Fiscal Year 2020 Financials Run Down

On May 7th, 2020 Nintendo had its annual investor call where they report their earnings for the fiscal year that ended on March 31st 2020 (FY2020). During these investor calls, Nintendo publicly announces all its hardware and software sales. Here are some highlights and take-aways from the report.

• Overall Switch hardware sales for this fiscal year – 21.03 million
•  Switch software sales for this fiscal year – 168.72 million
• Switch lifetime sales – 49.57 million
• Switch Lite lifetime sales – 6.19 million
• Overall lifetime Switch hardware sales – 55.77 million
• Switch lifetime software sales: 356.24 million
• Switch hardware forecast for this fiscal year: 19.5 million
• Switch software forecast for this fiscal year: 140 million
• 3DS lifetime sales: 75.77 million
• 3DS lifetime software sales – 383.11 million

You can check out the full report here at Nintendo’s official website as it goes into far more details and breakdowns of how many traditional Switches sold vs. Switch Lite.  A few things to note are that the overall hardware for Switches is very healthy at 55 million sold, a very good feat in a little over 3 years on the market.  Also from April 1st 2019 to March 31st 2020 Nintendo sold 21 million switches and did 168 million in software sales.  You may notice that the same time period for FY2021 the forecast is less than what was achieved as Nintendo told investors that they are forecasting both hardware and software sales down due to the current pandemic that is happening which is effecting Nintendo’s ability to manufacture more Switches and develop games to hit release dates. This comes at a time where demand for Nintendo Switches is at an all-time high due to the release of Animal Crossing and the nationwide/global stay at home orders leaving gamers needing something to do to pass the time.  All this demand had led to shortages for the Switch and scalpers are using bots to buy up the online inventory of Switches and are reselling them at mark-ups. On a lighter note, software sales for the Switch are amazing.  If you compare the 3DS numbers there are 75 million 3DS sold vs. 55 million Switches however, there are 383 million software sales for the 3DS vs. 356 million software sales for the Switch which is not that big a gap.  By crunching the numbers, you can see the attach rate for each system.  The 3DS has an attach rate of 5.06 whereas the Switch has an attach rate of 6.39.  So on average, a Switch owner has 6 games in their collection which are more than a 3DS owner that has about 5. Lastly, you can go here to see the top software sales for Nintendo.  Mario Kart 8 Deluxe still holds the top spot at 24.77 million units sold, but the big spotlight goes to the debut of Animal Crossing: New Horizons at 11.77 million units sold. This accounts for about 11 days on the market since it launched on March 20th and the fiscal year ended on March 31st.  Nintendo did want to take a victory lap as it shared with investors that as of the day of their briefing, the game was at 13.47 million units sold.  It’s also worth mentioning that 9 out of the top 10 selling software for the Switch is over 10 million units sold. Nintendo also told investors explicitly that the Nintendo Switch is now at the halfway point in its life cycle. Congratulations to Nintendo on another successful year of the Switch on the market.