The unpatchable exploit recently discovered to affect the Nintendo Switch apparently hasn’t affected the popular gaming console’s success, nor its maker’s earnings. On Thursday, April 26, the Japanese gaming conglomerate gave us a look at its latest earnings, and simply put, they look good. In the first three months of 2018, Nintendo managed to sell a total of 15 million Switch gaming consoles, which is a whole 50 percent above its initially expected sales volume of 10 million units. The handheld console contributed enormously to the company’s $9.7 billion revenue figure, up 116 percent over the same time last year.
The most popular games associated with the Nintendo Switch were Super Mario Odyssey, which sold 10 million copies, followed closely by Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at nine million, and Splatoon 2 at six million. And as Nintendo continues to add more games to its roster, it’s expecting that folks will gravitate toward the Switch even further — over the next year, the company intends to sell 20 million Switch units.
And arriving to lead the company into this ambitious territory is a new president, Shuntaro Furukawa. Formerly a board member of Pokemon Co, the relatively young executive (he’s 46) will take over the reins from the company’s current leader, Tatsumi Kimishima, who was responsible for the debut of the Switch in 2017. The hope is that this injection of young energy will propel Nintendo further forward, and continue to make the company appealing to new generations.
“The key thing here is that management is getting younger,” Satoshi Kurihara, an analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Institute, told Bloomberg. “They will have to execute the Switch’s growth plan, so in that sense this is a new start.”
Another new start is Nintendo’s Labo, a cardboard-based gaming creation that, as we previously reported, gives players the chance to build working pianos, remote-controlled cars, and even a fishing rod using their Switch systems. This is expected to be another big hit for the Nintendo team, though it’s still a little too early to tell exactly how users are actually reacting to this DIY gaming system. In any case, under new leadership and with a flagship product as successful as the Switch, it seems that we’ll have plenty to look forward to from Nintendo.
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