Nintendo profits up 33% to $2.37 billion as Switch sales surge

Nintendo's recent fiscal year earnings jump across the board thanks to massive software sales surge.

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Nintendo just released its FY2020 earnings report, and the results are stellar. The company generated over $12 billion in net revenues during the year, 95% of which was from its gaming branch. Operating income spiked by a staggering 41% thanks to strong game and hardware sales, and profit likewise leaped by 33% year-over-year to a high $2.37 billion.

Nintendo FY2020 Earnings

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• Net Revenues - $12.01 billion (¥1.308 trillion), up 9% YoY
• Operating Income - $3.23 billion (¥352.3 billion), up 41.1%
• Profit - $2.37 billion (¥258.6 billion), up 33.3% YoY

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Throughout the year, Nintendo sold 21.03 million Switch consoles. The Switch Lite, which was introduced smack-dab in the middle of the fiscal year, made up nearly 30% of total console sales by moving 6.19 million units in its first six months on the market.

Nintendo Switch hardware sales made up 52.2% of the company's FY2020 gaming earnings, or $5.87 billion. Total cumulative Switch platform hardware sales now sit at 55.77 million worldwide since its 2017 launch.

To date, the Switch is the seventh best-selling Nintendo console of all time.

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Software was also up by a near-astronomical level, pushing past the previous year's mega performance with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Software is up 44% from last year to 168.72 million sales, driven strongly by the one-two first-party punch of Pokemon: Sword and Shield and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, both of which also pushed new hardware adoption rates.

Animal Crossing alone sold 11 million copies in just 11 days, making up nearly 7% of all Switch game sales for the entire year, and currently outperforms some games that've been on the market for 140 weeks.

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R&D costs, which includes development of new first-party games as well as hardware experimental designs and development, jumped a hefty 20% YoY to to $782 million (¥84.1 billion). This is likely due to game dev costs as well as Switch Lite development, but it could indicate Nintendo is brewing up the rumored Switch+ model.

For Fiscal Year 2021 (now until March 31, 2021), Nintendo expects all metrics to drop. This could be a conservative estimated due to COVID-19 impacts, or it could telegraph what to expect from Switch releases this year. The rumored Super Mario remasters could be the only big string of first-party games coming to the Switch this year.

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