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Nintendo sales decline after sparse Wii U holiday lineup

Nintendo sales decline after sparse Wii U holiday lineup

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Nintendo's sales are down on a year ago after a quarter which saw the Japanese games company make an operating profit of ¥33.5 billion ($278 million) off ¥224.5 billion ($1.86 billion) in revenue — respectively a 7 percent increase and 17 percent decrease year on year. The forecast for the full financial year ending in March remains ¥50 billion in operating profit; Nintendo has made ¥42.4 billion in the nine months so far. Net profit was ¥29.1 billion ($241 million), nearly a 36 percent drop since last year.

Nintendo sold 1.87 million Wii U systems in the last quarter, a 2 percent decline on a year ago; the company had an extremely lean lineup of software releases over the holiday season, so this isn't a surprise. Nintendo singles out Yoshi's Woolly World as a "steady" new performer, though it hasn't made the list of the 10 best-selling Wii U titles. Overall, Nintendo has sold 12.6 million Wii U consoles since its launch in late 2012; the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which both came out a year later, have sold about 36 million for Sony and an estimated 19 million for Microsoft.

This is very much a lull period for Nintendo, which is widely expected to unveil its new console, codenamed NX, later this year — it's unlikely that we'll see many more big titles for Wii U beyond the upcoming Legend of Zelda game. The company also plans to release its long-awaited smartphone games, the first of which is called Miitomo and should be available in March.