Key Takeaways
- Nintendo’s sales have been “below expectations” for the first half of the 2025 financial year.
- The best-selling game was Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, selling 2.58 million copies.
- Sales of the Nintendo Switch have dropped sharply as people prepare for the Nintendo Switch 2 announcement.
Nintendo has released the company’s financial results for the first six months of the financial year (ended September 30), which show a fall-off in both hardware and software sales (thanks, GamesIndustry.Biz). This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Nintendo is gearing up to announce the Nintendo Switch’s successor within the first quarter of 2025.
Nintendo generated ¥523.3 billion ($3.4 billion) in net sales, reflecting a 34% decline in sales when compared with the same period last year. These sales include 4.72 million hardware units (down 31%) and 70.28 million software units (down 27.6%). The biggest software seller during this period was The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, which sold 2.58 million copies despite releasing five days before the financial period ended.
The next best-selling games were Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (1.94 million copies) and Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD (1.57 million). In the same period last year, the hugely successful sequel Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom sold 19.5 million copies while the release of the Super Mario Bros. Movie bolstered the sales of titles that share that IP, such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
By the Numbers
On the hardware side, according to the newest financial results, the best-selling piece of hardware for this period was the Nintendo Switch OLED which sold 2.5 million units. However, this is a 20 million decrease in OLED sales when compared to the same period last year. Though this decline was predictable, Nintendo does concede in the report that “hardware and software unit sales through the first half of the fiscal year were both below our expectations…”
The next six months for Nintendo also look bare, with Mario & Luigi Brothership (November 7), Donkey Kong Country Returns HD (January 16) and Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition (March 20) being the only scheduled releases within the latter half of the financial year.
Of course, everyone is awaiting the announcement of the Switch 2 which is still set to arrive before April 2025. Once the announcement has been made, the console will be released by the holiday period 2025 in all likelihood.
