Nintendo tweeted about hitting 10 million sales in the US with its new Super Mario Bros on Wednesday- a piece of news that has come as a surprise for many analysts and sections of the media who had thought that Nintendo, once the king of gaming, was dead. IGN listed the 2000 Super Mario in its list of top 10 Wii games ever. Besides that, the popular game also made it to the list of 125 best Nintendo games ever.
After being written off by third party video game publishers after its slow launch, the company is now showing signs of resurgence.
“There hasn’t been much good news to report regarding Nintendo’s financial situation since the company’s historic annual loss way back in the 2011 to 2012 period,” Michael Pachter, a video game analyst for Wedbush Securities, said to Fortune. “That may be changing. Strong sales of new Wii U and 3DS software helped raise the company to a surprising quarterly profit of 24.2 billion yen (about $224 million) in net income for the three months ending September 2014. That’s quite a turnaround after a loss of over eight billion yen (about $74.2 million) in the same period last year.”
And while crossing the 10 million sales over the US is not a small achievement in itself, let us remind you that American sales make up only a third of its total sales. The much loved side scrolling version of the game has sold more than 28.65 million units across the world.
Perhaps the Nintendo move to cut the price of the game from %50 to $30 in September 2013 helped the company get to this milestone faster. The Wii itself had sold more than 100 million units worldwide by July 2013, leaving its nearest rivals, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 far behind.
“The name of the game for Nintendo is games. When you have a great launch like Mario Kart 8, a single launch can change your momentum fairly quickly. Our Wii U hardware business is up 47 percent this year versus last year and our Wii U software is up 84 percent. Those are testaments to a strong launch like Mario Kart 8 that has universal appeal. And Super Smash Bros. Wii U will be the next catalyst for hardware sales,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo’s executive vice president (sales and marketing). Moffitt is hoping to hit it big this holiday season and is predicting it to be one of the biggest for the gaming company in many years.
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