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Newzoo: Nintendo could reap billions from subscriptions, digital sales, and mobile

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

Nintendo had spectacular growth in 2017, with revenues growing 172 percent to $9.2 billion from a year earlier. That’s good enough to push the Japanese publisher and hardware maker into the top 10 gaming companies by software revenues after a three-year absence from the list, according to market researcher Newzoo.

But Newzoo estimates that Nintendo has a $2.5 billion opportunity to grow revenue via subscriptions, in-game console transactions, and mobile games. Nintendo is pursuing those options, but the percentage of revenue it gets from them is much smaller than its peers.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.