[friendlybus]

68mil Nintendo Switches sold.

19mil Breath of the Wild (Zelda)

21mil Smash bros

28mil Animal Crossing

The gamecube and the wii were reasonably cheap hardware with a markup. I haven't researched the switch, it looks no different to me.

*updated to sep2020 figs

[onebot]

What are the margins. I can almost certainly say that the margins on the games are far greater than the hardware.

[friendlybus]

In 2017 Nintendo sold roughly $257 of Switch hardware for $300. 40 dollar profit. They might have increased the margin since then.

A $60 game is sold to a retailer for $38-45. The publisher takes 20 of that (nintendo in this case) and the advertising & developer take the remaining 20. So nintendo probably takes 40 dollars profit from first party games like Zelda.

Margins on consoles used to be lower, $10-20 and they'd make $40 on the controller sales. The joycons on the switch cost 45 to make and sold for 50. The margin is back into the console as a whole again.

Digital sales on ingame items are likely close to pure profit.