Super Mario movie and Zelda game breathe fresh life into Switch as Nintendo posts a 52% profit surge
Nintendo reported a surge in revenue and operating profit for the June quarter boosted by the success of the “Super Mario Bros. Movie” and the the popularity of its latest Zelda game for the Switch console.
Here’s how Nintendo did in its fiscal first quarter versus Refinitiv estimates:
- Revenue: 461.34 billion yen ($3.2 billion) versus 395.40 billion yen expected.
- Net profit: 181.02 billion yen versus 109.91 billion yen expected.
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Nintendo’s revenue 50% from a year ago while net profit surged by 52%. Operating profit came in at 185.44 billion yen, ahead of expectations, jumping 82.4% year-on-year.
Prior to the fiscal first quarter, Nintendo had seen two straight quarters of revenue and
Nintendo saw a boost from the “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” based on the company’s best-known characters, which has generated more than $1 billion at the box office since its April release. The film was produced by Universal Studios.
The Japanese gaming giant also released a highly-anticipated game called “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” in May, which it said was the fastest selling title in the history of the series.
“In the first quarter of this fiscal year, both sales and profits were notably large for a first quarter mainly due to the concurrent releases of ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ and ‘The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’, and we made steady progress toward our full-year earnings forecast,” Nintendo said in an earnings release.
Nintendo previously forecasted its revenue for the current fiscal year, which ends in March 2024, at 1.45 trillion yen and 340 billion yen of profit.
Switch refresh in focus
Nintendo also previously forecast sales of 15 million units of its flagships Switch games console series for its current fiscal year ending March 2024. That compares with just under 18 million units sold in the previous fiscal year.
The company said that it sold 3.91 million Switch consoles in the June quarter, up by 13.9% on the year.
Chris Pratt and Charlie Day voice Mario and Luigi in Universal and Illumination’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”
Universal
The Switch is now a more than six-year old console, with investors fearing buyers’ interest may have peaked — but the rise in sales may help to allay some of those concerns. The quarter highlights Nintendo’s ability to continue to generate revenue from its 116 million of annual playing users and perhaps extend the longevity of the Switch.
Over the life of the popular console, Nintendo has tried to refresh it with a handheld version and with one with an improved screen. But speculation continues on whether Nintendo will release a new version to breathe fresh life into the device and the company.
Analysts at Jefferies said in a note in April that the company will likely release a refreshed version of the Switch in this current fiscal year, or the next such period, which starts in April 2024. But the timing will depend on how well Nintendo’s overall financial performance is, and whether the company will need a new Switch to help boost sales over this year or the next.
The Mario and Zelda effect
The Mario movie benefitted various parts of Nintendo’s business, creating a halo effect that drove users to the Japanese gaming giant’s products. Nintendo said the film supported sales of games featuring the famous Italian plumber, including Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
It also helped Nintendo rake in 31.8 billion Japanese yen in June quarterly revenue for its mobile and intellectual property-related business — a rise of 190% year-on-year.
“The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” was another big factor in Nintendo’s bumper quarter. The latest game in the Zelda franchise sold 18.51 million units in the quarter.
Mario and Zelda pushed Nintendo to post a 26% year-on-year rise in software sales to 52.21 million units.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.
Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk appears on a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, on Sept. 23, 2025.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Oracle on Friday pushed back against a report that said the company will complete data centers for OpenAI, one of its major customers, in 2028, rather than 2027.
The delay is due to a shortage of labor and materials, according to the Friday report from Bloomberg, which cited unnamed people. Oracle shares fell to a session low of $185.98, down 6.5% from Thursday’s close.
“Site selection and delivery timelines were established in close coordination with OpenAI following execution of the agreement and were jointly agreed,” an Oracle spokesperson said in an email to CNBC. “There have been no delays to any sites required to meet our contractual commitments, and all milestones remain on track.”
The Oracle spokesperson did not specify a timeline for turning on cloud computing infrastructure for OpenAI. In September, OpenAI said it had a partnership with Oracle worth more than $300 billion over the next five years.
“We have a good relationship with OpenAI,” Clay Magouyrk, one of Oracle’s two newly appointed CEOs, said at an October analyst meeting.
Doing business with OpenAI is relatively new to 48-year-old Oracle. Historically, Oracle grew through sales of its database software and business applications. Its cloud infrastructure business now contributes over one-fourth of revenue, although Oracle remains a smaller hyperscaler than Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
OpenAI has also made commitments to other companies as it looks to meet expected capacity needs.
In September, Nvidia said it had signed a letter of intent with OpenAI to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia equipment for the San Francisco artificial intelligence startup. The first phase of that project is expected in the second half of 2026.
Nvidia and OpenAI said in a September statement that they “look forward to finalizing the details of this new phase of strategic partnership in the coming weeks.”
But no announcement has come yet.
In a November filing, Nvidia said “there is no assurance that we will enter into definitive agreements with respect to the OpenAI opportunity.”
OpenAI has historically relied on Nvidia graphics processing units to operate ChatGPT and other products, and now it’s also looking at designing custom chips in a collaboration with Broadcom.
On Thursday, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan laid out a timeline for the OpenAI work, which was announced in October. Broadcom and OpenAI said they had signed a term sheet.
“It’s more like 2027, 2028, 2029, 10 gigawatts, that was the OpenAI discussion,” Tan said on Broadcom’s earnings call. “And that’s, I call it, an agreement, an alignment of where we’re headed with respect to a very respected and valued customer, OpenAI. But we do not expect much in 2026.”
OpenAI declined to comment.
WATCH: Oracle says there have been ‘no delays’ in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide
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