Nintendo Co. reported a 36 percent drop in quarterly profit after lackluster video game sales for the year-end holiday shopping season.
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Thanks to the delay of first Zelda and then Star Fox Zero, Nintendo didn’t really have a centrepiece release on the Wii U for Christmas. Nintendo expects to sell an additional 340,000 systems by March 31, 2016 to close out its current fiscal year. “In addition, Yoshi’s Woolly World, which was released during this period, and evergreen titles released in the previous period such as Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U showed steady sales”. In fact, during the Christmas period, less than one games were sold for every Wii U. It also had a solid performance from Super Mario Maker, which sold over 3.34 million units and captured the attention of the Twitch livestreaming community.
As of December 31st, 2015, the Wii U has sold 12.6 million units. The good news for Nintendo is that it still finished the quarter with an overall profit.
To put those sales into perspective, Splatoon has so far outmatched PlayStation 4 exclusives The Order and Bloodborne combined.
The company has been forced to acknowledge an industry-wide shift toward mobile gaming in recent years, while Nintendo’s traditional console business, anchored by legendary hits like Super Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong, struggles. According to Nintendo, “Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer” was a hit game for the platform.
Piers Harding-Rolls, from the IHS consultancy said: “The history of how the Wii U was marketed and users’ actual experiences have not lived up to expectations”.
The company’s new president Tatsumi Kimishima said Nintendo needed more time to “boost the quality” of its first smartphone offering.
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3DS sales have also trended upwards as the handheld sold 3.6 million more units in Q3, bringing lifetime sales of the handheld to 57.94 million.
