amiibo sales amaze as Nintendo’s profits take a small tumble, 3DS in decline

It’s quarterly financial reporting time and time find out how Nintendo did during the critical holiday period. Like the period before it’s not all good news, but it’s not all bad. Hey at least they’re not losing money. This third quarter covers October 2015 to December 2015.

For the period net profit came in at 29.1 billion yen ($343m AUD), that’s down from 45.2 billion yen ($533m AUD) in the same period a year ago. Revenue was also down, it was 221.5 billion yen and operating profit was 33.5 billion yen. Last year Nintendo had a 271.5 billion yen revenue and 31.8 billion yen operating profit, down but not by huge amounts.

So forget about how much money Nintendo made, how many consoles and games did they shift? The Wii U sold through 1.87 million units in the quarter, slightly down on the same period but the Wii U should still be on track to reach its goal for the year. Total life to date sales for the console are now 12.6 million units.

The Nintendo 3DS though is still in a steep decline, this time last year Nintendo sold 5 million units in the quarter, this year just 3.6 million units. There lifetime to date sales for the 3DS now site at 57.94 million units.

amiibo was a real strong point for Nintendo with 9.9 million units sold worldwide during the quarter. There are now 20.5 million amiibo figures out there in the wild and 21.5 million amiibo cards.

Software faired much better for Nintendo, the company’s games continue to be ‘evergreen’ with even years old games still bringing in the sales. New games such as Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer (2.93m) and Tri Force Heroes (1.08m) managed to defy the expectations of many. On the Wii U front Mario Kart 8 continues to truck along with 1.2 million sold during the quarter brining it to a total of 7.24 million sold. 57% of Wii U owners now own the game. Yoshi’s Wooly World also joins the million sellers club on the Wii U with 1.31 million sales now in total.

So what about NX, Miitomo, Zelda? Not much was said on the subjects aside from Miitomo reconfirmed for release soon and Zelda nailed in for 2016.

Perhaps we’ll hear more about those games tomorrow at the investor briefing?

Source: Nintendo IR