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Dulfite on 02 November 2019
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RolStoppable said:
Dulfite said:

Interesting chart. Is that just software sales, or hardware? And I'd be more interested in global figures than just US.

Rereading your comment I'm assuming this is just software sales? And the average they make per game is higher because they are mostly $60 to start, though their cost of development is also a higher average due to this being all HD rather than the 3DS standard definition.

The chart displays net sales which is another term for revenue, so the total amount of money spent on Nintendo products during each year. The figures are global, the US part in the headline of the image only refers to the currency of the numbers.

What's more interesting than a chart for net sales (a.k.a. revenue) is operating profit, so the money Nintendo has earned after their costs and expenses have been substracted.

This image highlights how much better Switch is for Nintendo than the 3DS and Wii U were. The sum of the 3DS and Wii U years evens out to about zero profit; the 3DS launched at the tail end of fiscal year 2011, so the vast majority of the 2011 bar are profits generated by the Wii and DS. Fiscal year 2012 is when Nintendo had to cut the price of the 3DS early and that caused the loss; afterwards the Wii U didn't help matters.

Switch launched at the tail end of fiscal year 2017, so it was available for only one month in the 2017 period. 2018 includes Switch in earnest and that's where profits are shooting up. Basically, Switch made Nintendo more profit in its first year than the 3DS and Wii U did during their entire lifetimes. 2019 shows further growth and the current fiscal year 2020 (not on the image) will see another slight increase. While Switch won't reach the same peak as the Wii and DS combined (2008-2010), it's doing leaps and bounds better than the 3DS and Wii U to become one of the most successful consoles of all time, regardless of which metrics are used (revenue, profit, hardware units, software units, tie ratio).

Thank you for this! Profit is, ultimately, the only thing that matters so it is cool to see this! So Really a proper profit comparison would be 2007 Wii/DS vs. 2018 Switch, and they are pretty darn close. But on the other hand, 2008 Wii/DS is blowing 2019 Switch out of the water, but I guess the Switch still has a few months left in the fiscal year to catch up?