Nintendo sold 5.88M 3DSes and 3.06M Wii U systems over last 9 months

Nintendo may make smartphone games now, but it’s still a hardware-first company at this point.

The gamemaker has now sold a total of 12.6 million Wii U systems and 57.94 million 3DSes. This is after selling 3.06 million Wii U consoles and 5.88 million 3DSes during its first three quarters of 2016. For just the third quarter, which includes the gift-giving holidays, Nintendo sold 1.87 million Wii U units and 3.6 million for 3DSes. This is important as Nintendo tries to scrape as much as possible from the multi-billion-dollar console-gaming industry.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1869928,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,games,","session":"B"}']

Nintendo is in a rough spot with its hardware. The company has never had a home console sell this slowly before, and that is a big reason why the company is getting into smartphone games and is prepping a new system for launch possibly later this year.

The 3DS is also continuing its slip from sales relevancy. Nintendo’s portable has seen some injection of life thanks to hardware revisions and a few big releases, but the system is going on 6 years old at this point, and a full follow-up release would do a lot more for the publisher than another year of 3DS sales.

The rumor is that Nintendo’s NX will address both the home and handheld markets with some sort of hybrid system. The company will share more information about the NX at some point this year, and analysts are more and more convinced that we’ll see that device go on sale during 2016.

Correction: This story originally said that the sales were for last quarter, but they were for the first nine months of Nintendo’s fiscal year.