“More than half of these downloads came from the American market.”
☆ NintendObs Event – Nintendo FY3/2016.
Next, I will describe our progress in download sales. This graph shows our download sales by quarter over the last four fiscal years. Despite coming after the holiday season, the fourth quarter had the highest sales of any quarter over the fiscal year ended March 2016. The total for the entire fiscal year was 43.9 billion yen.
The large increase in the fourth quarter this year is due to the release of downloadable content for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U in February and downloadable content for Fire Emblem Fates that was released in the U.S. in March.
We have focused on expanding the digital business, both to keep up with changes in the industry and as a new business opportunity. This shows that we have made steady progress in the digital sphere.
This slide shows the download sales shown by region for the last two fiscal years.
Sales for the fiscal year ended March 2016 have expanded in all regions compared to the prior year. We have seen a particular jump in sales in the Americas, represented by the yellow bar.
The Americas, in yellow, make up more than half of the total, followed by Japan in blue, then Europe in red.
This slide shows the top-ranked download titles, excluding downloadable versions of packaged software.
As I noted in the last financial briefing, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U and Mario Kart 8 made particularly outstanding contributions.
Twenty years after the release of Pokémon Red and Green, we launched Pokémon Red, Green, Blue and Pikachu as Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console titles in February this year. These titles and the popular downloadable content for Fire Emblem Fates also secured top spots.
Worldwide, the four Virtual Console titles – Pokémon Red, Green, Blue and Pikachu – have been downloaded more than 1.5 million times. More than half of these downloads came from the American market. Since the start of the calendar year, Pokémon has been the subject of much attention in America, and sales are showing a favorable trend. Although these are downloadable software titles, download codes sold through retail stores have been a high proportion of sales in Japan. We believe that we have successfully created a chance to appeal to the nostalgia of consumers who played these titles when they first came out.
* Pokémon Green was only released in Japan.
— Tatsumi Kimishima, President of Nintendo
Source: Nintendo JP.
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