Although Nintendo is forecasting a drop in profits and sales for the current financial year, its hardware and software are still selling like there's no tomorrow. The Switch has now sold more than 107 million units and software has surpassed 822 million units, as of March 31, 2022.
It should come as no surprise then that Nintendo has also recently ranked as one of the "top 10" video game companies in terms of game revenues for 2021. In a new report released by Newzoo (via GamesBeat), a graphic reveals how Nintendo made around $8.1 billion, an increase of 1.9% year-over-year. This puts it in 8th place, just behind Activision Blizzard.
Taking out the top spot was the Chinese video game giant Tencent - banking more than $32 billion, and Sony was in second place with $18.2 billion. Companies like EA, Activision Blizzard, and Microsoft also showed a lot more growth compared to previous years. And collectively, the top 10 generated a total of $126 billion in 2021.
What do you think of the above graphic? Leave a comment down below.
[source venturebeat.com, via gonintendo.com]
Comments 40
The fact that Activision Blizzard not only made slightly more money than Nintendo this year, but is also about to be acquired by Microsoft is horrifying but so interesting to watch and see what happens.
It's like a horror movie that's teasing you with a jumpscare that you know is happening, but you're not mentally prepared for it and you don't want to close your eyes because you want to see what happens next.
Yeah, I just compared financial rankings to jumpscares, nothing's out of bounds for me.
And Nintendo without any live service games.
looks at EA
I would have guess that Nintendo would have been higher, maybe top five. But then again was last year that great for them? Not really.
Considering that Nintendo isn’t making “mainstream “ games like your CODs or your fortnites this is pretty nice. As much as Nintendo’s heavy hitters sale they are still usually behind the mainstream darlings of sports games, shooters and battle royales. All genres that Nintendo directly doesn’t have major IPs (if any in).
Aaaw I hoped they'd be higher. I hope this doesn't encourage them to follow some of those greedy turds in higher places and look at more micro transactions and pay to play etc that so far they are steering (fairly!) clear of
Hrmm I'm not sure what's contributing to the data here, but there's absolutely no way Sony makes that much more money than EA on games alone. Is Hardware being included? And if it is, then does Apple not get phones included?
All seems a bit messy to me...
In all seriousness, FIFA alone probably makes more money than everything Sony. Anyone able to shed some light?!
Like some others, I was pretty shocked at how low Nintendo is on this list. Switch hardware continues to outpace the competition every year, and Nintendo's first-party games are always leading the pack in terms of software sales. But if the data only accounts for first-party games, I guess it makes sense, since Nintendo doesn't do multiplatform releases. If you factor their revenue from third-party software, NSO memberships, and hardware, I'm sure the numbers are quite higher. Still--I don't get why their first-party lineup would be underperforming so much compared to Sony, who also doesn't publish their games on other hardware... Unless they really hit a grand slam with that baseball game.
@HotGoomba If MS buys Activision, they will support Nintendo again including Call of Duty for the first time since Wii U.
@Not_Soos Sony sold millions of games on PC too last 2-3 years.
Nintendo is missing out on a lot of money by ignoring the neutral PC market.
Meanwhile Sony will release more PS exclusives on PC in 2022.
In fact they even registered "Playstation PC".
Nintendo could start with a old game like Bayonetta 2 on PC. Would easily sell a lot.
Ryu_Niiyama wrote:
I'd posit that Mario Kart and Animal Crossing's numbers certainly make them firmly "mainstream". But at the end of the day it's just subjective pigeonholing and unimportant.
Ventilator wrote:
Perhaps. Though personally as someone who rarely uses the Switch's USP (portability) it is usually the worst place to play everything. If Nintendo's exclusives came out on PC I likely wouldn't buy their console which would also lose them out on console revenue, 3rd party store revenue and having to share the cut with Epic/Steam. The same isn't true for PlayStation/Xbox for me. YMMV but I expect there a enough gamers in my position for them to take a hit overall.
Erigen wrote:
Mario Kart Tour at $4.99pm is definitely a live service and you can easily argue that Mario Kart 8 deluxe and Super Smash Bros Ultimate with all their staggered DLC packs are also live service games, depending on who's definition you use. One of the popular ones is:
Sound familiar?
Huh?
I have no idea where Newzoo got their numbers, but Nintendo made ~¥1,700 billion in revenue in 2021, which equates to just over $13 billion, not $8.1 billion. Their number for Nintendo's revenue in 2020 is also woefully wrong too.
This list is about revenue, but I wonder how it pans out as earnings when you count the amount of money these companies have spent recently?
Those numbers are weird, I'm not an economist but nintendo posted 13bn not 8bn, which puts it slightly above Microsoft
https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/14618338
"The company posted 1.6953 trillion yen ($13 billion) in net sales in fiscal 2021, down 3.6 percent from a year earlier."
https://twitter.com/MauroNL3/status/1523972989766840322?t=V8ErnBJZvD6OZu6TDXusBw&s=19
But who cares
@Ventilator I hope that's truly the case
At least Nintendo did it the right way, not relying on microtransactions and predatory loot boxes to get their revenue…
Oh wait, what about Nintendo’s forays into mobile games?
While it’s true that Nintendo is more honorable than most of the companies on this list, they’re not completely innocent.
What’s $8.1 billion in real money?
@nocdaes this article shows Sony's game revenue broken down for Q1-Q3 2021. Based on this, over half their gaming revenue is from "add-on content", i.e. paid DLC. They take a 30% cut from any in-game purchase, so any micro-transactions from Fortnite/Apex/Fifa/etc. This likely explains the big gap with Nintendo since there doesn't seem to be as big a userbase for these sorts of games on Switch (arguably for the better?).
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/84432/playstation-4-billion-in-games-revenues-94-from-digital/index.html
@FatWormBlowsASparky Two Yachts, a private plane, and 4 full time butt wipers.
I question the validity of these figures, Newzoo is not a very liable news site. Also how much of this is net revenue compared to expenses?
Blizzard still up there, guess all the "omg I'm not buying from them" people didn't really matter in the end lol.
I'm sure they'll jump a few spots with the upcoming Diablo mobile game which so far is excellent.
Question: "game revenues" means just software? or software + hardware?
@Ryu_Niiyama Nintendo has a slew of Mario Sports games AND just released Switch Sports. They also have two EXCLUSIVE battle royale games Tetris 99 and Pac-Man 99. And Splatoon 3 is about to be released, so that covers the shooter category. You can even add Pokemon Unite in there even though it's also ok mobile, as covering the MOBA category, but it's business model is one like Fortnite.
(I am surprised by Microsoft, is that from Windows Games too?)
Not surprised to see Tencent number one, but a little sad to see Nintendo below NetEase which I didn't even know existed. I half expected miHoYo to make the list.
@themightyant you also cut off my entire statement. So you are mis quoting the fact that I was comparing mario kart to games like COD and fortnite which are arguably higher in the public notice (and revenue generated). I stand by what I said. Even still, I am not sure what your issue is as I was complementary towards Nintendo.
@thinkhector Aside from perhaps wii sports (and I am guessing because I don’t feel like looking for sales figures right now) the majority of Nintendo entries into the sports, shooter or battle royale genres trail in sales/install base and revenue generated to say FIFA/Madden, COD, or Fortnite. So I am not sure what issue you have with what I said. And splatoon and Tetris 99 as I said are not major IPs. Are they important to the Nintendo catalog and fanbase? Of course but these are not in the “mainstream” discussions when those genres come up. When someone talks shooters in a generic gaming convo they usually mention an FPS like Halo or COD. Battle royale is usually fornite. I am not knocking Nintendo, rather saying I am they are holding their own against larger properties.
@Ryu_Niiyama No issue at all. I just thought it interesting you were saying Nintendo don't make mainstream games. When to my eyes games like Mario Kart. Mario and Animal Crossing are the definition of mainstream. But I guess that is subjective. Peace.
@themightyant Microsoft releases everything on Steam, and pays the 30% fee as it's worth it because of all the extra millions of extra sold games that 99% of Steam owners refuse to buy on Windows 10 store.
@themightyant Yeah. Mario Kart is the most mainstream Nintendo game ever had which sells to 50% of consoles owners.
@SteamEngenius Remember when people shat all over that Diablo mobile game? Those were fun times . I'm looking forward to it myself.
Well, that chart is curious, first, Apple and Google, speaking of "only Game Revenues", they can't stay there, because they don't have ("many") own games (including their game platforms, they are "low" or "new") , but, if we speak about the platforms system shops (iShop and Google play), well, it's true, However, where will be Valve's Steam?
@FatWormBlowsASparky In REAL money thats like eight Bitcoin.
What the h e double hockey stick games does this Chinese game company even make? I've never heard of them. I knew Apple was killing it outta left field but, here we are.
Apple and Google are killing it because of phones and kids. Nintendo needs to make a phone. So there would be Apple, Samsung, and Nintendo phones. That would be fresh af! Nintendo PhoneBoy!
@Kainbrightside You're right. That's how Apple and Google are killing it. They get a cut of every game that is sold on their stores on their phones. I remember reading that a while back.
@Not_Soos I thought they would go higher too, but considering they only release a new game every other month and not all of them are heavy hitters, $8 billion ain’t too shabby.
@Ryu_Niiyama The graphs show the year 2020 and 2021.
In 2020 Nintendo released:
In 2021 Nintendo released:
And yet Activision made more money, and grew more. Impressive.
@Rykdrew good on Nintendo for holding their own.
State-owned Monopolies do better than other countries with regulations because of state run benefits.
Revenue doesn't matter much, where are the profit rankings?
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