Nintendo warned investors about less-than-stellar financial results earlier this month, and the company wasn’t kidding.
Nintendo today released its latest earnings report for the three-month period ending Dec. 31, 2013. The game giant did post a net income of $93 million, however, the Wii U’s struggles continue to hurt Nintendo.
The earnings revealed that the Wii U, which debuted in November 2012, sold just 2.8 million units in 2013 alone. For context, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have sold more than three million units each in about two months.
Still, Nintendo did sell 1.95 million Wii U consoles from October to December, which was a great deal more than the previous two quarters (160,000 and 300,000 devices).
But after expecting to sell nine million units during the 12-month financial calendar year (March 2013 to March 2014), the company has downgraded that goal to just 2.8 million consoles. And, despite the improving sales numbers, the console is still hurting Nintendo’s bottom line.
“The Wii U hardware still has a negative impact on Nintendo’s profits owing mainly to its markdown in the United States and Europe,” Nintendo noted in the report.
There was a bit of good news for Nintendo, with the 3DS handheld console selling 7.76 million units from October to December thanks to an array of first-party titles released last year.
However, in the fourth quarter, Nintendo said it expects sales to “decrease significantly due to seasonal factors as the year-end sales season concludes.” The company is forecasting a yearly loss of $339 million when its 2013 fiscal calendar wraps up in March.
