wiiuNintendo returned to annual profitability in financial results reported overnight, but the company fell short of its own earnings forecast, and the underlying trends in its hardware sales do not bode well for the Wii U, the new console that launched last fall.

The company’s original Wii console, released in 2006, actually outsold its younger sibling in the March quarter — with 450,000 shipments worldwide for the Wii, compared to fewer than 400,000 for the Wii U. The new Nintendo console, with its tablet-style GamePad controller, represents the company’s attempt to gain new traction in the living room.

That adds up to about 850,000 consoles between the Wii and the Wii U for the quarter. By comparison, Microsoft last week reported 1.3 million Xbox 360s sold worldwide during the same period.

In its earnings release, Nintendo credited the release of New Super Mario Bros. U and Nintendo Land for initially helping sales of the Wii U during the 2012 holiday season.

“However, ‘Wii U’ was not able to maintain the initial sales momentum after the beginning of 2013 due to a delay in the development of subsequent software titles,” the company said, noting later that it will “concentrante on practively releasing key Nintendo titles from the second half of this year through next year in order to regain momentum for the platform.”

Overall, for the fiscal year ended in March, Nintendo reported sales of 635.4 billion yen (or $6.4 billion) compared to its forecast of 670 billon yen. The company’s annual profit of 7 billion yen was half its forecast of 14 billion yen.

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