Could the Nintendo Wii U go through the same growing pains the Nintendo 3DS did before it went on to become one of the best selling handheld consoles? Or is the Wii U doomed to fail, thus leaving a stain in Nintendo’s books? Naturally the first scenario would be preferred by the folks at Nintendo, investors, and die-hard fans who love the games that Nintendo puts out, but unfortunately the reality is that the Wii U is doing rather badly. According to Nintendo, the Japanese company recently announced that they have only managed to sell 2.4 million Wii U units in the nine months that ended on the 31st of December 2013. To put things into perspective, this pales in comparison to Sony and Microsoft who sold 4.2 million and 3.9 million units of their console in a span of six weeks.
According to the numbers, Nintendo’s profits dropped by 30% although they did make a profit of around $99 million, mainly thanks to sales of the Nintendo 3DS hardware and its accompanying software. In fact it would seem that software far outsold the hardware of the Wii U and the 3DS, suggesting that the software was being bought by existing gamers rather than new gamers looking to get both hardware and software. Nintendo is also now forecasting a loss for the fiscal year of $242 million ending in March 31 2014, where previously they expected to profit of $532 million. Nintendo’s executives are also expected to take pay cuts, with their president Satoru Iwata to take a pay cut of 50% as we had previously reported.