Nintendo levels up on Animal Crossing hype, but now the Console Wars are here

Bank of Nook just got a fat deposit... Nintendo released its financials for the six months ended September 30th, and things are looking super good for old Mario.

• Profit more than tripled as Nintendo sold 14M+ copies of hit game Animal Crossing: New Horizons — apparently, fictional island utopias fare well during pandemics.
• Sales jumped 73% as Animal Crossing and Mario drove big software and hardware sales. Nintendo sold nearly 7M Switch consoles in just the last 3-month quarter.

Cool hardware needs cool software... to be worth anything. The Switch has been around for almost four years, but the Animal Crossing frenzy turbocharged sales. Still, there are two Bowsers that could put a damper in Nintendo's 2020 glory...

• Console Wars: Next week, two long-awaited consoles are dropping (on the same day): Sony's PS5 and Microsoft's Xbox Series X. Switch will get some fresh hot competition.
• Cloud Gaming: Games that you can play with just a laptop and WiFi are a threat to Nintendo. Sony has Playstation Now, Google has Stadia, and Microsoft has its "Netflix for games." Even Facebook and Amazon offer cloud gaming.