#Nintendo Marks the Best Ever Year on Record in 2020 on the Back of Animal Crossing and Switch

(Photo: Daryl Harding)

Nintendo released its full-year fiscal information today for the year ending March 2021, announcing that the company had the best year for the company on record, greatly surpassing expectations, thanks to the increasing sales of the Nintendo Switch, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Nintendo did so well last year that in its own report, the Japanese company has told investors that the fiscal year 2022 won’t be as good as FY2021.

Software sales for Nintendo increased 35.6% in FY2021 to 1.7 trillion yen (US$15.57 billion), with the highest seller being Animal Crossing: New Horizons at 20.85 million copies sold. This brings the total copies of the game up to 32.63 million copies worldwide and the second-highest selling Switch game to date. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was the second-highest selling game of the year at 10.62 million copies for a total of 35.39 million copies sold (for reference the Wii U version only sold 8.45 million copies). The third highest-selling game was Super Mario 3D All-Stars at 9.01 million copies sold, with that being the final number of copies as the game has now been discontinued.

Digital sales increased 68.5% from the year prior on the back of Animal Crossing, the Pokémon DLC, and Kirby Fighters 2. The portion of digital sales also increased to 42.8% of all software sales on the Nintendo Switch–the highest it has ever been.

The last quarter (January to March) was lower than the previous year and was the only quarter to decline in sales for Nintendo. This is due to the fact that last March was the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which saw just under a staggering 12 million copies sold in two weeks. Nintendo factored out Animal Crossing in their report and found that software sales would have increased every quarter.

On the hardware side of things, the Nintendo Switch sold 28.83 million units in FY 2021, putting the console at 84.59 million units sold since it was first released in 2017. The Switch continues to be the second-highest-selling home console for Nintendo after the Wii, and the now the third-highest-selling portable console, surpassing the lifetime sales of the Game Boy Advance.

Overall, Nintendo increased its net sales by 34.4% in FY2021 for a total of 17.589 trillion yen (US$161.22 billion), with gross profits being 970.4 billion yen (US$8.89 billion). The only area which saw an overall decrease in sales for Nintendo was its playing card business, which fell from 3 billion yen (US$27.4 million) in FY2020 to 1.7 billion yen (US$15.57 million) in FY2021. 

(Photo: Daryl Harding)

When most companies would strive for even greater sales, Nintendo has told investors that it believes the company won’t do as well in FY2022, telling them to expect a net sales drop of 9% to 1.6 trillion yen (US$14.65 billion). While we’ll have to wait and see how the year plays out, and if Nintendo is hiding any new games up their sleeves, it’s great that the company is doing so well as competition heated up in November.

Source: Nintendo Investor Relations center

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Daryl Harding is a Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs a YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram.