By Sam Nussey
TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan’s Nintendo on Thursday said it sold 3.91 million units of its Switch console in the April-June quarter, exceeding sales in the same period a year earlier, boosted by the runaway success of its latest “Zelda” title.
Investor sentiment has been buoyed by the breakout success of the “The Super Mario Bros. Movie”, which leads this year’s global box office ranking, and praise for video game “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” which went on sale in May.
Nintendo said it sold 18.51 million units of “Tears of the Kingdom” in the first quarter. The game has a score of 96 out of 100 on reviews aggregator Metacritic, indicating universal acclaim.
Still, the market is focused on the timing of a potential successor for the hybrid home-portable Switch, which has received incremental updates including a handheld-only version but is now in its seventh year on the market.
“I think they’re going to ride out this fiscal year and squeeze the last bit of juice out of this system and then establish excitement for the new hardware sometime next year,” said Serkan Toto, founder of the Kantan Games consultancy.
The Kyoto-based gaming firm maintained its full-year forecast for the console of 15 million units.
It sold 17.97 million units in the previous financial year.
Hitting the sales target at this stage of the console’s lifecycle would underscore Nintendo’s success in extending the appeal of its hardware and uniting its console and handheld businesses in a single device.
Unlike periods of thin games supply previously, Nintendo also has a robust pipeline of titles with “Detective Pikachu Returns” and “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” due for release later this year.
Nintendo’s shares have delivered a more than three-fold return, including dividends, since the Switch went on sale in major markets in March 2017, outperforming the benchmark Nikkei’s 91% return over the same period.
(Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
