Swinging back into a net profit, Nintendo today reported financial results for the first quarter ended June 30. But the company reported a sizable operating loss, and it sold only 160,000 Wii U game consoles from April 1 to June 30. That’s a terrible showing for a console that is less than a year old.
NIntendo reported an operating loss of 4.92 billion yen, or $50.2 million, on net sales of 81.5 billion yen, or $832.8 million in the first fiscal quarter. Net profit was 8.62 billion yen, or $88 million.
On the good side, Nintendo did not change its forecast for a 100 billion yen operating profit in the current fiscal year.
Wii U software sales were 1.03 million units, down 51.3 percent from the previous quarter. To date, the Wii U has sold 3.61 million units worldwide. Nintendo had earlier predicted it would sell 5.5 million consoles by March 31, 2013.
Nintendo sold 1.4 million 3DS handhelds in the quarter, up 12 percent on a sequential basis. That was 25 percent down from a year ago, but software sales were up 49 percent thanks to sales of Tomodachi Collection: New Life and Animal Crossing: New Leaf.
On another note, the Wii console that debuted in 2006 has finally crossed 100 million units sold worldwide. Nintendo said revenue from downloadable digital content was up 150 percent from a year ago.