Nintendo president on the positive impact of The Super Mario Bros. Movie on its revenue and business
The Super Mario Bros. Movie came out last year to much success. For Nintendo, this ended up impacting its bottom line in a positive way. President Shuntaro Furukawa touched on this during the Q&A portion of a financial briefing this week.
According to Furukawa, The Super Mario Bros. Movie contributed to the mobile and IP related business seeing a big increase year-on-year. He explained:
This fiscal year, in addition to an increase in regular royalty income, there were also revenues related to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, with the result that sales in the mobile and IP related business increased greatly year-on-year. Although a portion of the revenues associated with the movie continue to come in even after its theatrical run is over, the majority stems from the box office revenues associated with movie theater screenings. For this reason, we think that the increase in sales in our mobile and IP related business this fiscal year has been largely due to the temporary factor of the theatrical release of the movie. Income from smart-device applications has decreased slightly year-on-year. However, download numbers and active users have increased for both Super Mario Run and Mario Kart Tour, thanks in part to the movie’s impact.
This fiscal year, sales volumes for both hardware and software were slightly lower year-on- year, but operating profit and other profits increased. This is largely due to the increase in mobile and IP related income, in addition to the impact of the depreciation of the yen.
From a medium-term perspective, the amount of royalty income we see coming from areas other than visual content has increased compared to when we started putting our full effort towards expanding the number of people who have access to Nintendo IP, and this income is continuously growing. Our top priority with our IP expansion initiatives is to invigorate our dedicated video game platform business by increasing the value of Nintendo IP and creating points of contact with consumers. As large as this field has grown, we intend to work to generate stable revenues in this initiative as well.
Furukawa was later asked if Nintendo is considering taking the movie’s success as a hint to expand its gaming business to regions in which Switch is not currently sold. In response, he said:
The Super Mario Bros. Movie was played in theaters and made available for streaming in far more countries and regions than we sell Nintendo Switch. The Super Mario Bros. Movie was especially well-received in Central and South America, notably Mexico, and so we increased our promotional efforts more than usual there during this past holiday season. As a result, while hardware sales decreased overall, they increased in Mexico. In addition, we also expanded sales channels in Southeast Asia and implemented initiatives to raise awareness of Nintendo for more consumers. In these regions, we want to first create a relationship with consumers through Nintendo Switch, and then utilize this foundation for our future business activities.
