Nintendo Reports Tears of the Kingdom Has Sold Over 18 Million Units
Posted on August 03 2023 by Alexis S. Anderson
Nintendo just published its financial results for the first quarter of this fiscal year, revealing that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has sold 18.51 million units. The financial report indicated that Tears of the Kingdom’s success “not only significantly increased software unit sales, but also drove hardware sales.” Consumers who played Breath of the Wild were the primary sales driver, but the report noted a growing percentage of purchases are being made by consumers who haven’t even played that title. And the number of annual playing Switch users reached a record high of over 116 million between July 2022 and June 2023.
Tears of the Kingdom’s impressive sales numbers constituted approximately half of Nintendo’s first-party software sold this fiscal year, contributing to global sell-through (the ratio of the quantity of goods sold by a retail outlet to the quantity distributed to it wholesale) of first-party software reaching the highest level for a first quarter since the launch of Switch. The Nintendo Switch has now sold 129.53 million units, and global hardware sell-through itself increased compared to the first quarter of the previous fiscal year.
Downloadable versions of Tears of the Kingdom also sold well, but strong sales of physical copies of Tears of the Kingdom resulted in a lower overall digital sales ratio compared to the same period last fiscal year.
Finally, the report confirmed that Nintendo will continue its efforts towards “visual content-related initiatives” following the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie., which totaled 168.10 million viewers and box-office revenue of 1.349 billion dollars, the highest ever for an original film based on a video game and the second-highest for an animated film. The report did not give any further details on what these future initiatives might entail.
Are you at all surprised by the massive success that Tears of the Kingdom has achieved? And are you optimistic that Nintendo’s future “visual content-related initiatives” will be based on the Zelda series? Let us know in the comments.
Source: Nintendo (via OatmealDome)
Alexis S. Anderson is a Senior Editor at Zelda Dungeon who joined the writing team in November, 2014. She has a JD from the UCLA School of Law and is pursuing a career in Entertainment and Intellectual Property Law. She grew up in the New Jersey suburbs with her parents, twin brother, and family shih-tzu.
