Over the past few months, Nintendo has admitted that Wii U sales have been underwhelming. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata even apologized for the lack of games hitting the platform. On Wednesday, official Wii U and 3DS sales were revealed, and both systems missed expectations.
First, the good news: Despite the fact that Nintendo's profits were 50 percent less than what the company expected, the fact that it posted a profit at all was great news. The game creator raked in $72 million, a nice change of pace from last year's $433-million loss.
The main reason for Nintendo's weak sales was slow demand for the company's new consoles, the Wii U and, to a lesser extent, the 3DS. As GamesIndustry International says, the Wii U was expected to sell about 4 million units (even that was a downgrade from earlier projections of 5 million), but it ended up only selling 3.45 million. And since about 3 million or so of those sales were made during the holidays, it's easy to say that demand has plummeted since the new year rolled over.
The 3DS, on the other hand, performed better but not quite good enough. The handheld system sold nearly 14 million units over the last year, but it fell short of the projected 15-million mark.
Nintendo expects to sell about 9 million Wii U consoles over the next year and 18 million 3DS systems. Here's what the company had to say about the Wii U's current situation, according to CNET:
"For the 'Wii U' system, launched in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2013, there were some delays in software development that resulted in intervals between new software title releases at the early stage of this year. Taking this into consideration, for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2014, we plan to concentrate on proactively releasing key Nintendo titles from the second half of this year through next year in order to regain momentum for the platform.
"Nintendo strives to improve the sales by communicating the compelling nature of our hardware and software to as many people as possible through our new network service called 'Miiverse,' which offers an environment where people can empathize with others and share their gaming experiences. We also strive to reduce costs to improve hardware profitability."
