In its first quarterly report of FY2026, Nintendo unveiled spectacular launch numbers for its successor system Nintendo Switch 2, as well as its main launch title, Mario Kart World. Many of the 5.63 million copies Nintendo admits were sold from 5 June to 30 June were download codes for the game that came bundled with the console, so you'd expect the strategy of boosting digital game sales to have worked out well for the company. Well, this is only partly true.
We say this because in additional material for Nintendo shareholders, the company acknowledges that digital sales are down 13.5% year-on-year compared to the same quarter last year. Digital sales still account for 59.3% of total sales, so it's not a change that upsets investors much either. On the other hand, sales of Mario Kart World are not counted in this total (being in a console bundle, they are included only in the hardware sales profit balance), which could also alter this figure.
The decline in digital sales is attributed to the depreciation of the yen and also to a decline in downloadable software content. On balance, total digital sales between April and June 2026 for Nintendo were 69.8 billion yen, equivalent to more than 400 million euros.