On the back of the resurgence of the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo have managed to generate healthy profit of $568 million dollars in the last quarter, bringing their cumulative profits for the fiscal year up to $906 million total. The profit represents a staggering 154% increase in the profit generated by Nintendo in the same period last year- and it indicates that after the troubled years of the Wii U, Nintendo are starting to get financially healthy again.
The star of the show in terms of these profits was, of course, the Nintendo 3DS, which sold 3.73 million units last quarter- for a system that is almost six years ago, those are great numbers, and they were probably helped by the release of Pokemon Sun/Moon. The lifetime sales of the 3DS are at 65.3 million units worldwide. Nintendo attributes the 3DS’s success to Pokemon, and also to the disappointing Super Mario Maker For Nintendo 3DS, which, bizarrely, is at over a million units sold worldwide. 3DS sales are 10% up year on year.
The Wii U, on the other hand, shipped just 200,000 units worldwide during the last quarter, which brings its worldwide sales totals to 13.56 million units sold. Nintendo does note that the highly diminished sales of the Wii U are in line with its own expectations, as it had forecast just 800,000 units for Wii U sold over the entire fiscal year in preparation for the platform winding down, and the Switch releasing.
It should be interesting to see what kinds of numbers Nintendo pulls in for the Switch this year- but as last year, which had very few meaningful game releases from Nintendo, and the Wii U’s worst year on record, showed, the company will be able to survive and get through no matter what happens.