Sales and profits up at Nintendo as the Switch continues to shine

Nintendo has released its financials for the six months ended September 30, 2017, and both sales and profits are on the up. 

Net sales increased by 173.4 percent year-over-year to 374 billion yen ($3.29 billion), while profits rose by 34.5 percent to 51.5 billion yen ($453.7 million) over the same period. 

Those results were partly driven by the success of the Switch, which has now sold 7.63 million units worldwide since launching in March. 

Switch software has also been bringing home the bacon, with Splatoon 2 in particular standing out after selling 3.61 million units globally in little over two months.

Lifetime Switch software sales now stand at 27.48 million untis, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild remains the best selling Switch title with 4.7 million units sold.

On the handheld front, 3DS hardware sales rose by 5 percent year-over-year to 2.86 million units thanks to the release of the new Nintendo 2DS XL in June and July.

Software sales took a hit, however, and despite solid showings from Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia and Metroid: Samus Returns overall 3DS software sales fell by 28 percent to 13.82 million units. 

As you'd expect given the immense popularity of the NES Classic, the SNES Classic Edition also got off to a good start following its September launch, although Nintendo didn't share any specific sales figures.

Over on smartphones, Nintendo says people are "continuing to enjoy" its mobile roster, which includes titles like Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes. 

All-in-all, the company's smart device related income totalled 17.9 billion yen ($157.7 million). That's a 426 percent increase year-over-year, although it's worth remembering that Nintendo's mobile operations have scaled up dramatically over the past 12 months. 

Looking ahead, the Japanese giant has upwardly revised its financial forecast and now expects to see sales and profits hit 960 billion yen ($8.46 billion) and 85 billion yen ($748.9 million) by March 2018.