Nintendo on sales of evergreen Switch titles
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa spoke about sales of evergreen Switch titles during the company’s financial results briefing last week.
According to Furukawa, the system saw a percentage of 50-60 percent for older first-party software over the past few months. He mentioned that new Switch buyers tend to pick up “an evergreen title as their second or third game.” However, going forward, Nintendo expects that there’ll be “more purchases of multiple systems within the same household, as well as consumers replacing a previous Nintendo Switch system with Nintendo Switch – OLED Model.”
Furukawa’s full words:
Evergreen titles that were released in previous fiscal years have made up a larger share of overall software sales since the last fiscal year. So far this fiscal year, in the nine months between April and December, titles released in past years comprised approximately 60% of unit sales for first-party software (sell-through, see Note) in major regions. Looking at only the three months between October and December, evergreen titles comprised approximately 50%, due to strong sales of new titles.
Regarding sales trends for evergreen titles, consumers who newly purchase Nintendo Switch hardware often choose to buy an evergreen title as their second or third game. In addition, as Nintendo Switch enters its sixth year, we believe there will be a decrease in the percentage of first-time purchases in terms of future demand for hardware, compared to what we have seen so far. We expect to see more purchases of multiple systems within the same household, as well as consumers replacing a previous Nintendo Switch system with Nintendo Switch – OLED Model. In these cases, consumers often already own the evergreen titles, so we believe that the ratio of evergreen title sales will decrease unless there is a major increase in first-time hardware purchases.
On the other hand, we believe that both first-time purchasers of Nintendo Switch and those who already own the hardware are interested in purchasing new titles. Going forward, it will be important to offer not only a variety of hardware but to also strengthen sales of both evergreen and new titles.
(Note) Sales to individual consumers. In addition to units sold by retailers, this number also includes units sold to individual consumers through Nintendo’s direct-sales sites and as downloadable software.
