Investor meeting: Kimishima on digital sales, Pokémon on Virtual Console (April 2016)

During the usual meeting with investors, which always follows the presentation of the latest financial results, Nintendo talked about digital sales, including those of the Pokémon games on Virtual Console.

First, Tatsumi Kimishima showed a graph with digital sales by quarter over the last four Fiscal Years. During the past Fiscal Year, Q4 was actually the best one for the Nintendo eShop, despite being after the holiday period. The large increase is obviously due to the following:

• the latest batch of DLC for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS;
• the release of Fire Emblem Fates and its DLC in North America;
• the release of the first Pokémon games on Virtual Console.

Total digital sales for the past Fiscal Year is 43.9 billion yen, which is the highest ever for Nintendo. In the past few years, Nintendo has focused on the digital business, for two reasons:

• to keep up with changes in the game industry;
• as a new business opportunity.

It’s clear that Nintendo has been successful in their endeavour, even though their digital sales remain way below those of the competitions. In other words, there’s still a lot Nintendo has to do in order to improve their digital offerings, and thus, increase their sales in this business.

The graph below shows digital sales by region for the last two fiscal years. During the past Fiscal Year, sales increased in all regions, though one of them did significantly better than the others: the Americas, who make for more than half of total digital sales. Japan is second, and Europe third (digital are not really widespread yet in that region).

Head after the break for the rest of this post!

Next is the Top 5 of digital sales (exclusing digital copies of retail games).

DLC for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Nintendo is still #1, followed by Mario Kart 8 DLC. The Virtual Console releases of the 4 original Pokémon games are #4, which shows just how popular they have been. DLC for Fire Emblem Fates was also pretty popular (due to the second and third versions being available as DLC, sold ~$20, which is more than the average Nintendo eShop title).

Finally, Tatsumi Kimishima talked about the Virtual Console releases of the four original Pokémon games, on the Nintendo eShop. He revealed that all four versions have been downloaded over 1.5 million times, which is pretty impressive for the Virtual Console. Unsurprisingly, half of these sales come from the Americas. This is due to the Pokémon 20th Anniversary celebrations, which have had a very positive impact on sales so far.

In Japan, download codes were sold at retail (along with a special edition including some goodies), and those made up a high proportion of total sales. For Tatsumi Kimishima, Nintendo was successful in appealing to old time fans who played the original Pokémon games when they came out.

Source: Nintendo