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Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Nintendo Financials Reveal Dire Wii U Sales

Nintendo released its financial results for the last quarter today, revealing strong 3DS sales alongside Wii U sales that are below even pessimistic expectations.

Nintendo remains in profit overall thanks to the strong performance of its assets and the recovery of the currency market against the yen, but it made a slight operating loss of just under 5 billion yen, around $50m, meaning that the business of actually selling games and consoles was not profitable. Nintendo attributes this loss to "total selling, general and administrative expenses [which] exceeded gross profit due to enhancement of advertising and promotion of Nintendo 3DS overseas to increase sales, and research and development for the Wii U software."

This is an improvement on last year's 10 billion yen operating loss over the same April-June period. Nintendo's overall net profit for the period was 8.624 bn yen, or $88.1m.

As ever, the sales figures tell the most interesting story. The Wii U sold just 160,000 units globally between the beginning of April and the end of June, an astonishingly low number. That's less than half the 390,000 units that it managed to sell in the final three months of its last financial year. Software figures were not much better: 1.03 million total for the quarter. Total Wii U sales now stand at 3.61 million.

The Wii, meanwhile, sold 210,000 in the same period, with 3.67 million games sold. It's just nudged over 100 million lifetime sales.

The 3DS, with 1.4 million units sold and an impressive 11.4 million games sold, has kept Nintendo afloat this quarter.

A number of 3DS games were very successful, chalking up huge sales. Animal Crossing: New Leaf, having already sold over 3 million units in Japan, sold another 1.59 million in the West up to June 30th. Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon sold 1.43 million worldwide, and the report states that Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D was "well received", though it doesn't give figures.

Nintendo is not adjusting its full-year financial forecasts, and there is no official comment on these figures as of yet.

Keza MacDonald is in charge of IGN's games coverage in the UK. You can follow her on IGN and Twitter.


Source : ign[dot]com

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