Nintendo on Monday published its consolidated financial report for the third quarter of the calendar year, i.e. the second quarter of its fiscal year, revealing that its income generated from mobile games and intellectual property licensing amounted to 17.9 billion yen ($157.52 million) and hence increased by 426 percent compared to the same period in 2016. The company’s revenue reached $1.9 billion and led to $208.56 million in operating profit, prompting the Kyoto, Japan-based entertainment giant to almost double its fiscal year forecast and project it’s expecting a profit of $748 million in the 12-month period ending March 31st, 2018.
Mobile games weren’t the main growth engine for Nintendo over the first half of its fiscal year but still contributed to the company’s business performance in a significant manner, with its earnings report specifically highlighting the continuing success of Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes released in the previous fiscal year as one of the firm’s most notable achievements during the observed period. The Switch portable console is also performing above previous expectations, with Nintendo now expecting to sell 14 million units over its fiscal year ending March 2018 instead of 10 million and the company previously attributing a portion of its console success to mobile games which helped promote its IPs to owners of Android and iOS devices who ended up purchasing its hardware and related software, i.e. games.
Nintendo’s latest financial report mentioned that the recently soft-launched Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is set to become available for download on a worldwide level in late November. Likewise, the upcoming Zelda mobile game wasn’t directly referenced by the company officials but is presumably still on track to be released in the coming months. The firm is presently supporting four main platforms, or three if Android and iOS are counted as a single entity, with its other two targets being the 3DS and Switch consoles. This diversified approach is said to be one of Nintendo’s main strengths and the basis for the company’s long-term strategy that still doesn’t encompass any core Android games and instead only approaches mobile platforms with casual-oriented titles meant to serve as an advertisement for their full-featured console counterparts.