Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima detailed the latest on the company’s download sales in their financial results briefing for fiscal year ended March 2016.
Next, I will describe our progress in download sales. This graph shows our download sales by quarter over the last four fiscal years. Despite coming after the holiday season, the fourth quarter had the highest sales of any quarter over the fiscal year ended March 2016. The total for the entire fiscal year was 43.9 billion yen.
The large increase in the fourth quarter this year is due to the release of downloadable content for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U in February and downloadable content for Fire Emblem Fates that was released in the U.S. in March.
We have focused on expanding the digital business, both to keep up with changes in the industry and as a new business opportunity. This shows that we have made steady progress in the digital sphere.
This slide shows the download sales shown by region for the last two fiscal years.
Sales for the fiscal year ended March 2016 have expanded in all regions compared to the prior year. We have seen a particular jump in sales in the Americas, represented by the yellow bar.
The Americas, in yellow, make up more than half of the total, followed by Japan in blue, then Europe in red.
This slide shows the top-ranked download titles, excluding downloadable versions of packaged software.
As I noted in the last financial briefing, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U and Mario Kart 8 made particularly outstanding contributions. Twenty years after the release of Pokémon Red and Green, we launched Pokémon Red, Green, Blue and Pikachu as Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console titles in February this year. These titles and the popular downloadable content for Fire Emblem Fates also secured top spots.
