It hasn’t been a particularly cheery time for Nintendo Japan as the Wii U is failing to meet projections and with the company’s profits expected to fall short next quarter; these certainly aren’t the money printing heydays of the original Wii back in 2007. While we won’t speculate about where Nintendo is heading, because frankly everyone has their own opinion and mine is probably way off, we can report back some of the numbers that recently came to light.
Nintendo had expected to ship 9 million Wii U units by the end of their fiscal year in March. Their latest projections state that they now see themselves moving 2.8 million consoles – with 1.96 of them moving during the Christmas season that just past. In the end this will cost the company a projected loss of 25 billion yen ($242 million) ending March 2014. That’s a lot of numbers to go through but at the end of the day it means that Nintendo is losing money despite the strong sales and critical acclaim for their most recent 3DS titles.
The console manufacturer has tried to drum up support for its latest home console with a small price cut, the release of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD and third party titles like The Wonderful 101 last fall. 3DS also saw a number of high profile releases over the course of the last year including Pokemon X & Y, Fire Emblem and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.
