Nintendo raised its full-year forecasts on Tuesday, confident that video game sales, particularly the Mario series, will support those of its aging Switch console as the Japanese group maintains the mystery surrounding its next device.
Building on the box office results of the film “Super Mario Bros.” released in the spring, which became the 16th most lucrative feature film in history, the company underlined the positive impact of this hit film on its game sales in a press release.
“Nintendo is releasing numerous remakes within this franchise to capitalize on and expand on the synergistic benefits of the film,” commented analyst Takeshi Koyama in a recent note from Mizuho Securities.
In fact, in September the Kyoto company presented a series of titles scheduled for release in the coming months, including many updated versions of old games from the world of Mario, such as Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Luigi’s Mansion 2D or Paper Mario: The Thousand-year door.
The group is also focusing on original titles from this universe, releasing the platform game Super Mario Bros. Wonder at the end of October, and another film about Princess Peach is planned for next March.
The aim is to “continuously publish new titles in order to […] to boost console sales,” said the company, which on Tuesday slightly raised its annual game sales target to 185 million units.
The positive impact of the yen downturn is also expected to boost sales outside Japan.
Lots of rumors
For the full 2023-2024 fiscal year, which ends at the end of March next year, Nintendo now expects net profit to fall 3% year-on-year to 420 billion yen (3.8 billion Canadian dollars), compared to the previous forecast of 340 billion yen.
The company expects operating profit for the year to be almost flat at 500 billion yen ($4.55 billion), down from the 450 billion yen previously forecast. Sales are also expected to fall slightly by 1.4% to 1,580 billion yen (14.4 billion Canadian dollars), instead of a previously estimated decline of 9.5%.
However, a big question mark remains over the future console, the only one that can prevent the group’s results from collapsing beyond the next few months.
Numerous rumors have been circulating for several years about the successor to the Switch, which came onto the market in 2017 and sold more than 132 million units (at the end of September). This makes it the third best-selling console of all time after Sony’s PlayStation 2 and Nintendo’s DS.
According to the trade publication Eurogamer, Nintendo presented its future console to developers in August on the sidelines of the German Gamescom trade fair.
And some quarters believe that the next console will be hybrid like the Switch, meaning it can be both a portable console and connected to a TV, and that it could arrive in the second half of 2024.
But Nintendo never confirmed these rumors.
The group contented itself on Tuesday with maintaining its annual Switch sales target of 15 million units, three million copies less compared to the 2022-2023 fiscal year.
In the first half of the year (April-September), the group recorded a net profit of 271.3 billion yen (+17.7% year-on-year). Operating profit rose 27% to 279.9 billion yen and sales rose 21.2% to 796.2 billion yen in the same period.