TOKYO, Japan -- Nintendo said Thursday net profit jumped more than 50 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter, helped by increased video game sales and a windfall connected to U.S. tariff refunds. The success of “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” was also a bright point for the Japanese gaming giant, although unit sales for its current console, the Switch 2, are slowing. Nintendo highlighted the strong performance of two new games for the Switch 2, a gadget that became the world’s fastest-selling games console on its 2025 release. Both titles, “Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream” -- which sold nearly eight million copies -- and “Pokemon Pokopia,” are life-simulation titles whose cosy gameplay has been described as a balm to the stressful modern world. In April-June, net profit came to 147.4 billion yen (US$930 million) in April-June, up 53.5 per cent from the same period a year earlier, Nintendo said -- far surpassing estimates of 77.8 billion yen in a Bloomberg survey of analysts. The company maintained its annual profit forecast of 310 billion yen. “Despite an increase in software unit sales and the depreciation of the yen, overall sales for our dedicated video game platform business declined by 13.1 per cent,” mainly due to falling Switch 2 sales, Nintendo said. The company expects to sell 16.5 million Switch 2 units in the 2026-27 financial year, down around 17 per cent from 2025-26. It said in May it would hike the price of the console, as the artificial intelligence boom causes memory chip prices to soar. “Nintendo Switch 2 is now in its second year since launch... and sales continue to be strong. We aim to maintain the momentum for the hardware and see it delivered together with software into the hands of a wide range of consumers,” Nintendo said Thursday. The net profit jump reflects factors including “solid software sales” and “refunds of U.S. tariffs,” it added. The firm said in June it would remake the beloved 1998 action-adventure classic “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” for the Switch 2. “Ocarina of Time” is regularly celebrated as one of the best games of all time in the gaming press, and has a 99 per cent score on review aggregation site Metacritic. Analysts at UBS said ahead of Thursday’s earnings release that 2026 titles like the “Zelda” remake “should draw attention.” But “the pipeline still lacks a clear blockbuster title to materially accelerate Switch 2 adoption, with exclusive content likely expanding more meaningfully from 2027,” they said. Meanwhile, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” released in April, has become this year’s fourth top-grossing film at the box office worldwide, according to IMDBPro. The animation is a sequel to 2023 smash-hit film based on the wildly popular Mario games, and features the voices of Jack Black, Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor-Joy.
