Wii U: “Negative sales” hamper Nintendo

Nintendo has reported that poor sales of its new Wii U console have had a “negative impact” on its profits, despite selling nearly 3 million units as of December 31st, 2012.

The Japanese videogames giant reported profits for the nine month period ending December at JPY14.5 billion, significantly better than the JPY48 billion loss the prior year, however the company attributed its operating loss of JPY5.8 billion to lacklustre Wii U sales.

Wii U hardware sales were put at 3.06 million units (compard to prior estimates of 5.5 million) and the console’s software sales were 11.69 million units.

Of this, the US accounted for the lion’s share of sales at 1.32 million units, followed by “other” regions at 900,000 and Japan itself at 830,000.

Nintendo’s older Wii console continued to show its age over the nine-month period, with sales declining from 8.96 million units in 2011 to 3.53 million units in 2012.

Software sales for key titles were also revealed, with lifetime sales recorded as follows:

• New Super Mario Bros. 2 (3DS) - 5.96 million units
• Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS)- 2.73 million units
• Super Mario 3D Land (3DS) - 12.71 million units
• Mario Kart 7 (3DS) - 39.56 million units
• Black Version 2/ Pokémon White Version 2 (DS) - 7.63 million units
• New Super Mario Bros. U (Wii U) - 2.01
• Nintendo Land (Wii U) - 2.33

James Lee

@JeopikGoogle+more stories from James Lee

James Lee is a freelance writer and analyst with extensive experience in the technology, media and games sectors. For the past few years he has provided content for internationally published industry reports, SEO companies and a variety of news-focused websites. Prior to this, James was responsible for covering news and producing in-depth features for GamesIndustry.biz while occasionally contributing to its sister-site. Eurogamer.net. In addition to this he has contributed to other notable sites such as CVG.co.uk, Edge-Online and DigitalSpy.