Nintendo sales down 40 percent, but still making money

The DS and Wii are still printing money, but not as much as they were this time last year

Nintendo’s put out their financial statements from the last quarter (that’s April to June for those playing at home) and their sales are down on this time last year. In fact. their sales are down a massive 40% – it seems even Nintendo isn’t recession proof. Not releasing games of the calibre of Super Smash Bros Brawl or Mario Kart Wii doesn’t help.

Nintendo says as much: “In the console business, there were fewer blockbuster software titles that briskly drove hardware sales this June quarter versus the same period a year ago when titles like Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit were launched in overseas markets." Not only is not releasing any big games their enemy, but that pesky Japanese Yen is causing all sorts of problems with sales dropping from 253 yen from 423 yen the same time last year.

Here are some fun facts from the report too. There are now 107.7 million and 52.6 million Nintendo DSs and Wiis out there now. Wii Software is also looking good at with 384 million games sold to date; that makes the attach rate for the Wii a healthy 7 games per system.

These figures don’t take into account Wii Sports Resort, so expect the next quarter to hopefully be up on the back of that. Oh, and a small game called Monster Hunter Tri which may ship a consoles.

Source: Kotaku