Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

Wii U drags Nintendo into $97 million Q1 loss

Published Jul 30th, 2014 7:15AM EDT
Nintendo Earnings Q1 2015
Image: Chris Sewell

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

Nintendo’s struggles continued in the first quarter of fiscal 2015, as relatively poor Wii U sales and high costs resulted in yet another loss for the struggling video game giant. Nintendo on Wednesday reported a June-quarter loss of 9.92 billion yen, or $97.3 million, compared to an 8.6 billion yen profit in the same quarter last year. Revenue totalled 74.7 billion yen, or roughly $732.3 million, in the quarter, which represents an 8% decline from the year-ago quarter.

Perhaps the most disconcerting news is that this markedly worse performance comes on the back of dramatically improved Wii U unit sales; Nintendo said it sold 510,000 Wii U consoles in the fiscal first quarter, which is a huge improvement over the 160,000 units it sold in the same quarter last year.

Sales of the company’s latest home console were bolstered by the release of its highly anticipated Mario Kart 8 game, which sold 2.82 million copies worldwide.

Finally, the company noted a huge decline in sales of its portable Nintendo 3DS console lineup. Global unit sales totalled just 820,000 consoles in the June quarter, down from 1.4 million units in the same quarter last year.

Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.