For many of the older gamers, Nintendo is simply the truest infancy of gaming.
There was Atari and the Commodore, of course, but when Nintendo came out with the NES it was a brilliant marriage of both the simplicity of play and embracing gaming hobbyists that would eventually spiral into the multi-billion dollar industry that has long-surpassed Hollywood and music alike.
It’s no longer strange to play video games: it’s common.
Nintendo has always taken their role as the figurative grandparent of the modern gaming industry with pride and cognizance: their consoles stretch well beyond whatever norms are offered from the ill-fated Virtua Boy (our eyes are still crossed) to the surprisingly active and engaging Wii.
Their arguable trail-blazing tendencies have both worked in favor of the company and against for everything except other industry-norms: the Nintendo Shop is arguably far from even the Xbox or PlayStation’s current app shop offerings, and attempting to grab some friends together for a party of games will make you rip your hair out.
https://twitter.com/Nibellion/status/1324268590229540866
In spite of this, Nintendo has released their earnings today and the numbers are fantastic in terms of acceptance of the newest console, the coupling of 3D Mario titles, and the hotly debated Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Note that the earning release isn’t a verbose financial report that we’ve spent hours poring over when they arrive from Electronic Arts and Activision-Blizzard: it’s a surprisingly succinct eight pages in total (that you can peruse here).
Nintendo notes that Animal Crossing: New Horizons has sold a total of 26.04 million units thus far, and is thought to be a driving factor of console purchases for the Nintendo Switch, further explored between sales of the Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo Switch Lite (of which the former is far more popular, likely based upon time in market at this point in time).
Paper Mario: The Origami King was a bold new direction for the series; it sold 2.82 million units while the newest trilogy of 3D Mario, Super Mario 3D All-Stars has already sold 5.21 million units.
The Nintendo Switch itself has sold, as per Nintendo’s earnings release, an impressive 68,300,000 consoles since release, with 58 million being of the standard variety and 10 million of the Nintendo Switch Lite.
Granted, this puts Nintendo at the bottom of the console wars that PlayStation has easily won in the current generation, but Nintendo has never been about immediate competition with the other two.
They’ve always tried to embrace the wonder of video games, bringing bold new worlds and means of interaction. In that scheme alone, they’re absolutely crushing it.
