Nintendo profits boom as people stuck at home play games

TOKYO (AP) — Nintendo’s says its profit for the fiscal year that ended in March jumped 86% on healthy sales of the Switch handheld machine as people staying at home due to the pandemic turned to video games. The Japanese maker of Super Mario and Pokemon games says its annual profit totaled a record 480.4 billion yen, or $4.4 billion. The results were better than the company’s internal forecast. In game software sales, demand remained strong for “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” with 20.85 million units sold. “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe” also was popular. Nintendo said digital downloads for the Switch did well.