What oh what is Nintendo to do with the Wii U? The storied video game company on Wednesday reported earnings for its third fiscal quarter. While sales of its 3DS portable console line continued to hum along at 7.76 million units, the company only managed to sell 1.95 million Wii U consoles despite several anticipated game launches during the holiday quarter, including Super Mario 3D World. Nintendo’s net income plummeted by nearly one-third to Y10.1 billion, or about $98 million, in the December quarter. The company’s operating income came in at Y21.7 billion, or $211 million, and sales in the quarter totaled just over Y499 billion, or $4.8 billion.
Nintendo has now sold a cumulative total of just over 5.8 million Wii U consoles since it launched ahead of the holidays in 2012, and console sales in the current fiscal year now total just 2.4 million units. For comparison, Sony sold 4.2 million PlayStation 4 consoles in six weeks following its launch this past November, and Microsoft sold 3 million Xbox One consoles in just five weeks in 2013.
For the current fiscal quarter, Nintendo is forecasting an operating loss of about $324 million.
