Nintendo Co., Ltd. · FY ended March 2026
What kind of company is Nintendo now?
Hit films, a museum and a widening character business can make Nintendo look like an IP company in transition. Its FY2026 numbers tell a more complicated story.
This is not investment advice or a stock recommendation. We reorder company-published primary-source facts to make the shape of the business easier to see.
Mario, Zelda, Pokémon. Nintendo now has hit films and a museum, too. From the outside, the company can look as if it is moving from video-game hardware toward a much broader IP business.
Follow the numbers in order, though, and a different shape appears.
First, Nintendo is a very international company
Nintendo is headquartered in Kyoto, but where its sales come from changes the picture quickly.
Switch 2 arrived, but the old Switch did not simply disappear
A new console generation can look like a clean handoff. Nintendo’s sales figures show a much longer overlap.
Nintendo software can keep selling for years
The numbers are not only about launch-week hits. Older games repeatedly show up as meaningful sellers.
The way software is bought has changed, too
Nintendo’s catalogue lasts, but the transaction itself is increasingly digital.
Films and merchandise are visible, but games still dominate the revenue mix
Nintendo’s broader character and entertainment activity is increasingly noticeable. The revenue mix puts its scale next to the dedicated video-game business.
And the game company spends heavily on whatever comes next
The last set of numbers changes the feel of the company again: how much money goes into development.
R&D spending exceeded advertising
FY2026. Both were large, but R&D was about ¥33.2 billion higher.
THE VIEW AFTER THE NUMBERS
What the numbers suggest
Nintendo is expanding into films, characters and physical experiences.
But read the numbers in sequence and the company looks less like a business leaving games behind than a business that can keep games selling for years and is willing to spend heavily on the next generation of games and hardware.
More than three quarters of sales are outside Japan. More than 100 million people play in a year. Old Switch software still sold more than 100 million units after Switch 2 arrived, and a nearly nine-year-old Mario Kart still sold 2.88 million copies. R&D expense was ¥177.8 billion, above ¥144.6 billion in advertising, while a ¥121 billion development building is also planned.
The visible expansion of Nintendo’s IP and the less visible scale of its game-development machine exist at the same time. That combination is what the FY2026 disclosures make easiest to see.
Primary sources used
FY2026 Financial Results Explanatory Material
Nintendo Co., Ltd. · 2026-05-08
Pages used: p.4 / p.5 / p.6 / p.8 / p.15 / p.16 / p.26 / p.27
Open source →FY2026 Financial Results Briefing Q&A
Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Pages used: p.1
Open source →86th Annual Securities Report
Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Pages used: p.20 / p.21
Open source →