Nintendo posts record-shattering revenue fueled by Mario movie, Tears of the Kingdom
In a financial report published today, Nintendo disclosed that Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has sold 18.5 million copies, a record high for the company, and the global box office of the Super Mario Brothers film raked in more than one billion dollars.
Revenue jumped by 50 percent to $3.36 billion compared to the same period last year and operating profits are up 82% to $1.35 billion. Nintendo has the rest of 2023 to cash in on their slate of upcoming releases this fall such as Detective Pikachu Returns (Oct 6), Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Oct 20), and Super Mario RPG (Nov 17).
To put the earnings in perspective, game industry analyst @Dom made this chart:
Credit: Dom - Twitter
Massive sales of key IP have always been Nintendo’s silver bullet. Tears of the Kingdom's impressive 18.5 million sales at $69.99 per copy grossed a staggering total revenue of $1,294,815,000; that’s of course before taxes, fees, exchange rates and other expenses.
And there’s no sign of ToTK’s sales slowing down. The game is well on its way to catching up to Breath of the Wild’s 31 million copies sold. To boot, Nintendo very rarely offers discounts on their games and reports that this year nearly half of all their sales came from digital downloads. This saves on the cost of producing physical copies, boxes, manuals, etc. and sharing revenue with traditional brick and mortar retailers.
The picture was similarly rosy for Switch sales which they credit ToTK helping to drive hardware purchases. In Q1 of 2023 Nintendo sold nearly 4 million Switches and recorded their highest number of users ever, hitting 116 million MAUs (monthly active users) over the last year. Sales across the board for hardware remain strong across the family of Switch devices (OLED, Switch Lite, original Switch).
Credit: Nintendo
Then there is of course the Super Mario Brothers movie, which despite a mixed response from critics got rave audience reviews. According to the report, it was seen by 168 million viewers in theaters. The movie became available to stream today for Peacock subscribers, NBC Universal’s streaming service, and is for rent or purchase on platforms like YouTube, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime.
Super Mario Brothers set records for both animated features and movies based on games. It’s the highest grossing film based on a video game and is only second in animated features box office revenue to Disney’s Frozen II.
“By expanding Nintendo IP in areas outside the dedicated video game platform we create new opportunities for consumers to encounter Nintendo IP, and this invigorates our overall business,” says Nintendo in the report. “Based on the various effects that we have confirmed through the release of this movie, we will continue our efforts towards visual content-related initiatives.”
This means you can expect another Mario film as well as the company expanding their horizons to make films of their other original IPs like Zelda, Kirby, or Animal Crossing. The success of Mario Brothers had the knock-on effect Nintendo was hoping for as they report they saw a bump in sales for Mario Kart 8 which sold an additional 1.67 million copies since Super Mario Brothers hit theaters.