Nintendo Just Had Its Best Year Ever Thanks to Switch and Animal Crossing

Joseph Luster May 6, 2021

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With the fiscal year having come to a close in March 2021, Nintendo released its full report, and the results even managed to surpass expectations. Thanks to high sales numbers for titles like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and for the Switch console itself, Nintendo had its best year ever on record.

Over the course of fiscal year 2021, Nintendo’s software sales increased 35.6% to 1.7 trillion yen (US$15.57 billion). Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the highest-selling game at 20.85 million copies, bringing the grand total to 32.63 million copies worldwide. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe came in second at 10.62 for a running total of 35.69 million copies since launch, and Super Mario 3D All-Stars closed out the top three at 9.01 million copies. That one is now discontinued, so for now it looks like this will be the final total for 3D All-Stars.

There was also a 68.5% increase in digital sales thanks to Animal Crossing, Kirby Fighters 2, and the Pokémon Sword and Shield DLC. Digital sales now make up 42.8% of all software sales on Switch, which is the highest it’s been for Nintendo to date.

As for hardware, Nintendo Switch sold 28.83 million units in FY2021, cementing its position as the second highest-selling home console behind Wii for a total of 84.59 million units sold since its 2017 launch. Switch also comes in third for Nintendo portables, and has managed to surpass Game Boy Advance’s lifetime sales.

All together, Nintendo’s net sales increased by 34.4% to 17.589 trillion yen, or about US$161.22 billion. Nintendo did so well that the company had to tell investors that FY2022 will not be as good as FY2021.

Source: Nintendo Investor Relations via Crunchyroll