Nintendo full year financial results are in, Wii U still causing grief

Nintendo has posted its end of financial year report and as they predicted earlier in the year its another loss overall. The company posted a operating loss of 46.4 billion Yen and a net loss of 23.2 billion yen. This is now the third year in a row Nintendo has posted an operating loss.

Nintendo also failed to reached its revised Wii U forecast of 2.8 million units for the fiscal year. It wasn’t by much however with 2.72m sold. However this means that only a pitiful 310,000 units were sold worldwide in the last quarter. That now brings the life time to date sales of the Wii U to 6.17 million.

There’s not much confidence from Nintendo in the Wii U either, they believe it will only sell 3.6m in the coming year. That’s probably better than promising the world then missing expectations once again. Nintendo do think that Smash Bros and Mario Kart 8 will drive sales this year, we’d hope so.

Software on the Wii U has done well with games like New Super Mario Bros U being owned by 2 out of every 3 owners. However the attach rate elsewhere isn’t as fantastic.

Portables did better with 590,000 Nintendo 3DS family handhelds sold in the last quearter bringing the total nuumber of units sold to 43.3 million. 2.2 million of these are the Nintendo 2DS. Software did well in the handheld space as well with Pokemon X & Y reaching 12.26 million units sold and Animal Crossing at 7.66 million units. Luigi’s Mansion 2 has almost sold 4 million copies as well, quite a surprise.

Nintendo’s message alongside these results remains the same, expand the game audience and get games that use the GamePad (including NFC) to get more people to buy the Wii U. It’s said this consistently for years now, we hope it ends up working.