Nintendo has released its financial figures for the second quarter of the fiscal year, and they give us some interesting insights into how the company's games and hardware are doing as Switch 2 speculation ramps up.
According to Nintendo's financial report, net sales are down 34.3% this quarter compared to the same period last year, while operating profit is down a whopping 56.6%. In general, Nintendo's numbers aren't looking too great this quarter, but there's arguably a good reason for that.
Last year, Nintendo was riding high on the release of a new tentpole Zelda game in Tears of the Kingdom, which was a phenomenal sales success for the company. We're also getting closer to news of the Switch 2, and so many gamers are probably being cautious with regards to buying new hardware.
It could be argued that a new Zelda game was also released within the operating period for this report, which ends on September 30th, but Echoes of Wisdom isn't on the same budget and marketing scale as Tears of the Kingdom was.
Even still, Echoes of Wisdom did pretty well for Nintendo, it seems. The financial report confirms that the game had sold 2.58 million units by the end of the operating period, which means it achieved that milestone within just four days.
Elsewhere, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold 2.31 million units within the operating period, the Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake sold 1.94 million, and the Luigi's Mansion 2 remaster sold 1.57 million.
Hardware sales dropped 31% year-on-year, although sales of the base Switch and its Lite model were actually slightly up. In general, it's probably not a surprise that Nintendo's numbers are down given its position in the market right now, although things are perhaps slightly more gloomy than the company expected.
Technically speaking, from a hardware perspective, sales increased from Q1 to Q2, but overall, on a six-monthly basis, hardware was down. Nintendo attributes this quarterly increase to a Zelda-themed Switch Lite bundle, as well as "releases of hardware bundled with software titles".
You can check out Nintendo's full financial report here if you want to. It's got plenty more numbers and stats if you like to get stuck into the mathematical side of things.
