Nintendo remains in the black in Q3, lowers profit forecast, 3DS sales slow

Nintendo has released its third quarter financial report for this financial year and the signs are good for the company, the dark days of losses upon losses may be behind them.

For the period from April 2014 until the end of the year Nintendo has posted an operating profit on 31.4 billion yen for this quarter. Sales were down to 271.5 billion yen but the work behind the scenes has meant Nintendo have been profitable for two quarters in a row now.

Nintendo has lowered its expectations on how well it thinks it will do in the remaining quarter slashing its operating profit forecast from ¥40 billion to ¥20 billion. This is despite the fact that the New 3DS will launch in two regions.  The Wii U has seen an uptick in sales, however Nintendo has sold less consoles overall with the Nintendo 3DS dragging down the total for the year. Sales of the Nintendo 3DS in America were almost 50% less than the year before, no doubt people are holding out for the new models which launched only in Japan and here in Australia.

The Wii U now sits at 9.2 million units sold with 1.91 of them shifting in this quarter. The Nintendo 3DS has now surpassed 50 million units sold with only 4.99 sold in this quarter, a 35% decrease on last year.Nintendo has no problem selling games however with Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire shifting 9.35 million units, that’s slightly less than Pokemon X and Y but was out one month less.

The Super Smash Bros games on the Wii U and 3DS sold well with 6.19 million sold on the handheld and 3.39 sold on the console. Considering the gap in user base that’s a very impressive sell through for the Wii U version. Mario Kart 8 remains a strong seller to with 4.77 million copies out there, that’s more than 50% of Wii U owners who now have that game and impressive feat for any game on any console base. Digital sales of games in general were also up.

Sales for amiibo figures were not mention at all in the report.

Tomorrow morning at 10am local Japan time Nintendo will host an investor briefing to discuss these results, they’re always fun and we’ll have more on that tomorrow.

Source: Nintendo