Danica Davidson
August 5, 2021 
Last year Nintendo’s profits boomed during the COVID quarantine. This year, as quarantines are being lifted in many places, Nintendo has likewise seen a drop in sales.
“In regard to business risk, the extended impact of both COVID-19 and the global semiconductor shortage creates a state of continued uncertainty, with the possibility of future impact on production and shipping,” the video game company said in a statement.
In 2020, Nintendo’s first fiscal quarter brought in 106 billion yen in profit, which is approximately $966 million in America. This year their profit for the first fiscal quarter is 92.7 billion yen, or about $843 million.
Switch console sales have gone down almost 22% this year. Nintendo reports that they’ve sold just under 90 million Switch consoles in total.
Last year the newly released Animal Crossing sold 10 million copies between April and June, but when crunching the numbers, Nintendo saw that April to June 2021 saw 1.26 million Animal Crossing units sold. Altogether, the game has sold just under 34 million copies.
This year, New Pokémon Snap sold 2.07 million units during the same time period.
The Japanese news site Mainichi noted that there are concerns about Nintendo keeping up in the midst of increased virtual reality options and mobile gaming. At the same time, one of Nintendo’s big assets would be how recognizable some of its characters are, like the Super Mario Brothers. This allows Nintendo to continue to reuse these characters and also gives them abilities with theme parks, like the recently opened Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan.
Nintendo will also soon release Mario Party Superstars and more Pokémon games, so we’ll have to wait and see how those do. Nintendo is also teasing a “vibrant OLED display” for a new model of the Switch.
Source: The Mainichi
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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, and its sequel, Manga Art for Intermediates, with professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
