Nintendo March 2024 Financial Results Q&A Now Available In English

Nintendo has released an official English translation for their recent financial results Q&A for the fiscal year ending in March 2024.

The Q&A discusses a number of topics related to the newly announced Switch successor, as well as their plans for the rest of 2024. You can check out some snippets below, or read the full translation for yourself here.

Q1: I’d like to hear your thoughts about your game software development resources. You will be announcing your software lineup for the second half of 2024 in a Nintendo Direct in June but judging by the first half, the lineup seems weaker than usual. Have much of your development resources already been shifted to the successor to Nintendo Switch? I’d also like to hear about your long-term strategy for expanding your development resources.

Shuntaro Furukawa: Creating a successor to Nintendo Switch takes years of preparation, so of course many aspects must be taken into consideration in terms of software development resources. But we
are also continuing to develop software for Nintendo Switch, and will announce more about our upcoming software lineup at the Nintendo Direct scheduled in June.

We have continuously expanded our development resources over the past several years through the recruitment of recent graduates and mid-career hires. We will continue to actively work to secure the necessary development resources to increase the long-term value of our IP and to constantly offer unique entertainment proposals. Although development resources could be expanded through M&A, first we will work within the company with our developers, who thoroughly understand and have built up the Nintendo brand over the years, to have them nurture talent who can drive Nintendo’s future development. In addition, many of our external development partners have gained a deep understanding of Nintendo’s way of thinking and game development methods over the many years of collaboration, and we would like to further strengthen our ties with such partners. The process of game development will inevitably become longer, more complex, and more advanced. It is vital that Nintendo offers consumers new and unique experiences through game development, so we will actively invest in expanding our development resources.

Q4: I think one big change over the lifecycle of Nintendo Switch is the remarkable growth in digital sales. Looking back at the progress of the digital business and its contribution to financial results thus far, I would like to know what expectations you have for the digital business over the lifecycle of the successor to Nintendo Switch.

Furukawa: As you pointed out, the expanded scale of our digital business can be cited as one of the major changes since the release of Nintendo Switch. In the previous fiscal year, robust sales of Nintendo Switch Online memberships and add-on content for games such as Pokémon Scarlet  and Pokémon Violet, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Splatoon 3, as well as the depreciation of the yen, led to increases in both the digital sales amount and the digital sales ratio. Our objective is not to simply increase the share of digital sales, but to maximize overall game software sales, including sales of physical software. This policy will remain unchanged going forward.

In this context, we need to enhance user-friendliness for both consumers who play packaged software and those who play download versions. Going forward, we intend to keep working on improvements to devise better solutions. Compared to 2017, when the Nintendo Switch was launched, digitalization has progressed in many aspects of our lives. At this moment, if digital content continues to become more useful and convenient over time, we believe that more of our consumers will choose digital products with the successor to Nintendo Switch, just as they did with Nintendo Switch.

Q5 For hardware sales, the forecast of 13.5 million units for this fiscal year seems like an aggressive target, given the sales figures for Q4 of the previous fiscal year. What initiatives do you have in mind to achieve this? Regarding hardware supply, you had said before that when new hardware is released, you would like to manufacture and ship units in sufficient quantities to satisfy consumer demand, as a countermeasure against reselling. Given the recent improvements in the semiconductor market, do you think it is likely that you would be able to ship enough units of the successor to Nintendo Switch to meet the demand, right from the time of launch?

Furukawa: As was the case with the previous fiscal year, we are somewhat ambitious in our hardware sales forecast for the start of the fiscal year. Given the status of recent sales, we recognize this is not an easy figure to achieve. In the previous fiscal year, hardware sales momentum picked up due to hits such as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and The Super Mario Bros. Movie. In the end, sales exceeded the initial forecast of 15 million units, reaching 15.7 million.

This year we will need to implement various initiatives to sell the forecasted number of Nintendo Switch. During last year’s holiday season, we sold hardware bundled with software, and we also conveyed the appeal of having multiple units of Nintendo Switch in a household. We plan to implement various initiatives to approach 13.5 million units of sales in the current fiscal year as well. Regarding the supply of the successor to Nintendo Switch, we cannot give a specific answer, as we have not yet announced the timing of the launch. However, currently there is no semiconductor shortage like we saw up until 2022, so we are not anticipating the supply of semiconductor components to be a major issue when we launch the successor to Nintendo Switch.

Q6: Regarding the successor to Nintendo Switch, is there any special intention behind calling it a “successor?” Looking back at past hardware announcements, Wii U was described as a “system to succeed Wii,” and Nintendo Switch as a “game platform with a brand-new concept.” This time it is described as a “successor to Nintendo Switch.” Is this an indication of your intent to continue with the gameplay and concept of Nintendo Switch? You said there will be an update during this fiscal year. At that time, will you talk about its launch timing and specifications?

Furukawa: At this stage, we cannot say anything more about the successor to Nintendo Switch. For today’s announcement, we determined that the most appropriate expression to use was “successor to Nintendo Switch.” Information will be released in stages leading up to the launch, as we have done with previous new hardware announcements.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.