Nintendo has announced results for the first quarter of its financial year 2023 calendar, and multiplayer games have turned out to be the company’s top sellers.
In its Q1 FY2023 report, Nintendo states that Nintendo Switch Sports, Mario Strikers: Battle League, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe are its top sellers for the quarter, indicating that multiplayer titles are a big hit with the Nintendo Switch audience.
The console maker notes that Nintendo Switch Sports and Mario Strikers: Battle League, both released this quarter, are off to a strong start, while sales of evergreen titles such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe continued to sell well. The latter is popular multiplayer title that has a dedicated online community, while Nintendo Switch Sports and Mario Strikers: Battle League are looking to follow in its footstep. However, overall software sales did not keep pace with the strong showing of the first quarter of last fiscal year and totaled 41.41 million units, down by 8.6% year-on-year.
Meanwhile, on the hardware side of things, the total number of Nintendo Switch systems sold decreased by 3.43 million units, or 22.9 percent, over the previous year. Hardware sales were boosted by titles from other software publishers during the first quarter of the previous fiscal year, especially in Japan, but this first quarter’s unit sales of hardware decreased year over year as a result of the scarcity of semiconductors.
The total number of Nintendo Switch systems sold decreased by 22.9 percent to 3.43 million units year-on-year. Hardware sales were boosted by titles from other software publishers during the first quarter of the previous fiscal year, especially in Japan, but this first quarter’s unit sales of hardware decreased year-on-year as a result of the scarcity of semiconductors.
The shortage of semiconductor components had an impact on the sell-through of hardware, which was down from the first quarter of the previous fiscal year.
Though it couldn’t match the first quarter of FY2021, which was driven by strong sales of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, overall first-party software sell-through increased year-on-year to reach the second-highest level for a first quarter since the launch of the Nintendo Switch.
