Nintendo has launched its big Wii U game for the holidays, and it looks like it is at least partially responsible for keeping the publisher in the black.
The company reported the results of the first half of its fiscal 2016, and it revealed that it generated $1.69 billion (204.18 billion yen) in sales worldwide. That’s up 19.1 percent year-over-year, and the company credits Super Mario Maker, Splatoon, and certain 3DS releases in Japan with fueling that growth. That led to Nintendo generating an operating income of $74.5 million (8.98 billion yen) and an earnings of 79 cents (95.46 yen) per share.
Now, Nintendo did release Super Mario Maker in early September, and that release seemingly helped sell more Wii U systems when you look at the quarter-over-quarter numbers. And that definitely led to a spike in the three month period from July through September.
Where Nintendo generated $747 million of its revenue total in Q1, it was able to bring in $953 million in Q2. So it’s on an upward trajectory.
Unfortunately for Nintendo, it doesn’t look like it has much to sustain that velocity. It did just release The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes, and it’s got a few other games coming up, like Star Fox and a new Mario & Luigi role-playing game for Japan and Europe. But none of those are as big as Mario Maker — and the company knows that. It’s promising to maintain its “attention level” to that game along with Splatoon to keep them selling through the gift-giving holidays.
But even with all that in the works, Nintendo’s biggest stuff is probably behind it. It said it won’t revise its full-year fiscal outlook, which includes $4.7 billion in sales and $410 million in operating income.
To reach those figures, the publisher will need a monstrous holiday and, likely, the upcoming release of its first mobile game. Nintendo still says this first mobile release is coming before the end of the year, and we expect to learn more about it soon.