If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Nintendo Switch hit 4.7 million shipped in fiscal Q1

Mario Kart sold in 3.54m units in launch quarter, Arms sold 1.18m units in two weeks

Nintendo had shipped 4.7 million units of its Switch console by the end of June, with Mario Kart 8 leading the software charge with 3.54 million units sold in worldwide.

In the three month period that ended on June 30, 2017, Nintendo earned ¥154 billion ($1.37 billion) in revenue, an increase of 149% over the same quarter last year. It also turned a ¥24.5 billion loss into a ¥21.3 billion ($190 million) profit, primarily down to the popularity of the Switch.

Nintendo's new console, which launched on March 3 this year, had shipped 4.7 million units by the end of the quarter; an additional 1.97 million units to the 2.73 million it shipped in its launch quarter.

Nintendo has struggled to supply enough units of the Switch to meet demand ever since the console launched, so these shipment figures are likely to be close to the total number of consoles sold. The company's expectation of shipping 12.74 million units by March 31, 2018 remains unchanged from its April forecast.

An additional 8.14 million units of Switch software were sold in during the quarter, taking the cumulative total to 13.6 million units. The most popular title was Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which sold 3.54 million units between its April launch and the end of June.

ARMS, a new IP for the Switch, only launched on June 16, and yet still sold in 1.18 million units worldwide. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sold an additional 1.16 million units during the quarter, taking its worldwide total to 3.92 million units.

Amidst all of this excitement over the Switch, Nintendo's activities in mobile have attracted rather less interest than they once did - a notion that Rob Fahey explored in a recent editorial.

The company has released three mobile games - Miitomo, Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes - and it gets a cut of the proceeds from Pokémon Go. Altogether, its smart device and "IP related income" amounted to ¥9 billion ($80 million), up 450% year-on-year.

And while it was released outside of Nintendo's Q1 accounting period, Splatoon 2 has also made a positive first impression in Japan. According to Gematsu, Famitsu's numbers show just over 670,000 sales in its first three days, a significant improvement over the 156,000 units in four days for its Wii U predecessor.

Related topics
Author
Matthew Handrahan avatar

Matthew Handrahan

Editor-in-Chief

Matthew Handrahan joined GamesIndustry in 2011, bringing long-form feature-writing experience to the team as well as a deep understanding of the video game development business. He previously spent more than five years at award-winning magazine gamesTM.