mardi 31 janvier 2017

Nintendo Financials Reveal Strong 3DS Sales but Flagging Wii Consoles


3DS sales increase, while Wii U struggles.

Nintendo has released the company's latest financial report.

On the amiibo front, 6.5 million amiibo figures and 6.6 million amiibo cards were sold during the nine-month period between April 1, 2016 and December 31, 2016. For comparison, during the period ending December 31, 2015, Nintendo shifted some 20.5 million amiibo figures and 21.5 million amiibo cards.

According to Nintendo, the reason for the sharp decline in amiibo sales is due to the lack of amiibo-supported software for the period.

"Although the release of some new titles offering amiibo functionality restored some momentum, amiibo sales remained limited to 6.5 million units for figure-type and 6.6 million units for card-type,” writes Nintendo. “In addition, there were relatively fewer offerings of downloadable content during this period, so digital sales were also down to a large extent on the same period last year."

As for consoles, the 3DS has seen some success, while the Wii U continues to miss the numbers.

The 3DS sold 6.45 million units compared to the year before, which saw 3.6 million hardware sales. This growth brings the 3DS’s lifetime sales to 65.3 million units, which while impressive in a world where mobile phones and tablets dominates, still falls wide of the DS’s 154.02 million consumer-base.

For the Wii U, sales continue to disappoint, having sold just 760 thousand consoles over the period amounting to a drop of 75 percent on last year. The Wii U’s lifetime sales now sit at 13.5 million – a fraction of the Wii’s 101.6 million.

It’s not all doom and gloom, mind. Nintendo saw 16.7 billion yen come in thanks to the equity method relating to The Pokémon Company, and through the sale of the company’s majority share in the Seattle Marines baseball team. Extraordinary income amounts to a combined 63.5 billion yen overall.

Nintendo chose not to detail exactly how successful both the NES mini console and mobile offering Super Mario Run have performed, saying only:

“On the smart device front, we released Super Mario Run, a new action game featuring Mario, in 150 countries and regions on December 15 (Pacific Standard Time). This title elicited a fantastic response, surpassing 40 million downloads in four days after the release.

“The Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition also launched in Japan and overseas in November to widespread popularity.”

Nintendo’s overall revenue ending December 31, 2016 stands at 311.1 billion yen ($2.7 billion), a 27 percent decrease on the same period from the previous year. However, thanks to strong performances from the Pokémon franchise and the aforementioned sale of the Seattle Marines, total profits soared by 154 percent – totalling 103 billion yen (around $904 million).

Looking to the future, it’s all eyes on the Nintendo Switch – the company’s home-and-mobile hybrid console, which Nintendo hopes to shift a modest amount of during launch.

Wesley Copeland is a freelance news writer who writes excellent bios. For more obvious statements and video game chat, you should probably follow him on Twitter.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Aucun commentaire:

Enregistrer un commentaire