Japan's Nintendo sees record profits in April-June

Japanese gaming giant Nintendo Co. said Thursday that its net profit for the first quarter of the fiscal year jumped 52.1 percent from a year before.

Its profit attributable to owners of parent came in at a record 181 billion yen (US$1.27 billion) during the April-June period, the company said in its financial results.

Year on year, net sales for the first quarter of the fiscal year ending March 2024 increased by 50 percent to 461.3 billion yen, while operating profit rose by 82.4 percent to 185.4 billion yen, said the company.

"In the first quarter of this fiscal year, both sales and profits were notably large for the first quarter mainly due to the concurrent releases of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom," Nintendo said, citing steady progress toward its full-year earnings forecast.

Launched in May, the newest iteration of the popular action game Legend of Zelda became a huge hit, selling 18.51 million copies by the end of June.

Meanwhile, Nintendo's sales from its dedicated video game platform business increased by 44.6 percent year on year to 427.4 billion yen.

In addition to the year-on-year increase in unit sales of both Nintendo Switch hardware and software, another main factor in this growth in net sales was the larger percentage of hardware sales accounted for by Nintendo Switch-OLED Model, which has a higher unit price, the company added. (One US dollar equals 142.73 Japanese yen)