Haunter
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 |  Subject: Wii U: Nintendo Sells Under 500,000 in Six Months  Wed Oct 30, 2013 9:49 am | |
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- Nintendo has confirmed that the Wii U sold just 460,000 units worldwide in the six month period ending September 30, 2013.
The company's latest financial report reveals this quarter has been slightly better than the one before it; this time around Nintendo managed to sell roughly 300,000 Wii U consoles, as opposed to the 160,000 of last quarter.
Seeing as this quarter saw the company slash the cost of the console, alongside high profile releases including Pikmin 3 and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD, it's not the most encouraging figure and hasn't helped Nintendo's profitability. Favourable exchange rates meant the company turned a small profit of ¥600 million ($6.1 million), which is still a marked improvement over the previous year's loss of ¥28 billion ($186 million).
While 6.3 million units of software were sold in the last six months, the company told investors, "The Wii U hardware still has a negative impact on Nintendo's profits." The loss was largely blamed on the price cuts in Europe and the US, with advertising and game development also significant factors.
Nintendo's target was to sell 9 million Wii U units by the end of the 2014 financial year; a target which it now seems very unlikely to meet, seeing as lifetime sales of the console currently sit at 3.91 million units. Despite this, it's opted not to modify the target.
It hopes to hit the target by reducing the cost of hardware manufacturing and offering the console "at an affordable price by bundling software with the system". The company went on to highlight titles like Wii Party U and Super Mario 3D World, saying "we attempt to concentrate on proactively releasing key first-party titles towards the coming year in order to regain momentum for the platform."
While the future for the Wii U still looks uncertain, the 3DS is in a much more enviable position. Hardware sales for the 3DS family fell slightly for the period compared to last year but still managed to hit an impressive 3.89 million units, while software sales hit 27.38 million units, largely thanks to Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team and Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D. Animal Crossing: New Leaf, meanwhile, sold 2.49 million units worldwide.
Nintendo expressed optimism over the 3DS continuing to perform despite the release of the 2DS, citing "extremely strong initial sales" of Pokemon X & Y as "further propelling the popularity of the system". Source | |
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