Nintendo hasn’t been doing very well for quite a while now, and we’re guessing that the low sales of the Wii U console probably has not helped the company either. Some have compared the Wii U to the Nintendo 3DS handheld console which struggled at the start, but later proved to be a hit for the company, but it really doesn’t seem that way at the moment.
The Japanese entertainment company has recently announced their earnings for the fiscal year of 2013 and things aren’t looking so good. In fact Nintendo has missed their own expectations which they themselves have lowered. The company had initially warned that sales of the Wii U and 3DS are expected to be down, and they predicted 2.8 million for the Wii U and 13.5 million for the 3DS.
However according to their financials, the Wii U only managed 2.7 million units while the 3DS only reached 12.24 million units from April 2013 to March 2014. They were pretty close to Nintendo’s estimations but fell short just by a little. Nintendo also announced a 10% decline in net sales for the year to $5.6 billion and announced an operating loss of $457 million.
To put this into context, Microsoft and Sony, both of whom launched their new consoles back in 2013, have done much better in a shorter amount of time. Microsoft shipped 5 million Xbox One units in about half a year, while Sony managed to sell 7 million units of the PS4 in roughly the same amount of time as well.
Now we had heard rumors that Nintendo could announce new hardware at E3 2014, which some believe could help revitalize the company, but unfortunately those rumors fell flat. It looks like Nintendo, for now, will have to rely on their IPs like the upcoming Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. to help drive Wii U and 3DS sales.
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