Nintendo posts $958M profit but cuts Switch target despite strong Christmas sales

Published January 31, 2019

Nintendo has cut its ambitious annual Switch sales forecast despite enjoying a strong Christmas Q3 quarter.

The Japanese games giant recorded a 104.21 billion JPY ($958 million) net profit on revenue of 608.39 billion JPY ($5.59 billion) between October and December 2018. Revenue was up 26 percent year-on-year, which is an impressive feature given that quarter was a successful one for Nintendo, yielding its biggest operating profit in a Q3 for eight years.

The Nintendo Switch is now closing down on lifetime sales of the N64. Nintendo shifted a record 9.41 million consoles during the three-month period, up 30 percent annually, to take it to 14.49 million this financial year, which began in April 2018. However, despite a success last quarter, likely helped in no small amount by Christmas, Nintendo has trimmed its ambitious goal to sell 20 million Switch units this financial year. Instead, the target is 17 million, which means it is estimating around 2.5 million sales during January, February and March.

In terms of games, a bunch of new releases performed well in the last quarter. Pokémon: Let’s Go sold million titles since its November release, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sold 12.08 million since its December launch and Super Mario Party, released in October, reached 5.3 million sales. Total game sales jumped by 101 percent to reach 94.64 million sales during the period.

Nintendo’s retro consoles — the NES Classic and Super NES Classic — sold 5.83 million. But there is bad news for Nintendo loyalists, the upcoming Mario Kart Tour mobile game won’t ship in March — its revised launch date is this summer.

Nintendo’s Mario Kart mobile game won’t launch until the summer

Super Mario Party is Nintendo Switch’s best game

Published October 21, 2018

When I bought the Nintendo Switch a few months ago, my friends told me to buy Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. That’s precisely what I did, but none of those games were enough to get me hooked, which is probably for the best.

But then came Super Mario Party, which Nintendo released earlier this month for the Switch. I grew up gaming, but somehow never played Super Mario Party. Well, it seems as if I’ve been missing out my whole life.

Super Mario Party for Nintendo Switch is a quick, pick-up-and-play kind of game. You set the difficulty level, tell the game how much you want to party (ten, fifteen or twenty turns) and that’s how long you’ll party. But be careful playing with your friends or significant others — because it’s bound to stir up people’s competitive nature.

For those who are unfamiliar with Super Mario Party, it’s a digital board game. The name of the game (well, not literally) is to collect the most stars.

This is my character, Bowser Jr., collecting a star like a boss

To collect these stars, you roll one of two dice — a standard one or one that’s unique to your character. Some characters have dice that roll up to ten (like Donkey Kong and Bowser), but that also comes with the risk of not moving at all or losing coins, which you need to buy stars.

After each round, you play a mini-game, where you’re able to earn some more coins. Depending on the game, you’ll need to put your memory, hand-eye coordination or even sense of touch to work. Thankfully, there’s an opportunity to practice before each mini-game.

Throughout the game, there are opportunities to steal coins and stars from people. During my last party, Luigi stole a star from Yoshi (played by my girlfriend) and it wasn’t pretty. Let’s just say profanities were exclaimed.

There are more than 80 minigames available to play — some of which make great use of the Joy Con, the name for the Switch’s detachable controllers.

The party mode has four game boards. My favorite board (that is, the board on which I tend to perform the best, is Megafruit Paradise. Down the road, maybe through a software update of sorts, it’d be great to have more boards to choose from.

Super Mario Party also features a couple of other modes — river survival, where you control a boat with the Joy-Con paddles, a Sound Stage that reminds me of Dance Dance Revolution and mini-game mode, where you just play mini-games.

But in my experience, its the most fun to play the standard party mode. I’ve heard the best way to play the game is with four humans, but I’ve only ever played it with my girlfriend. We’re already both pretty intense about it so I could only imagine what it’d be like to play with two other people. Consider this my open invitation to holler at me to get a party started.