Nintendo made a good start to the 2013 fiscal year, recording a swing to profits for the first quarter thanks to strong Nintendo 3DS software sales worldwide.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the Nintendo 3DS gave Nintendo a massive boost, selling 1.19 million in the U.S. and Europe, and 1.54 million overall worldwide. That's on top of the over 3 million units it sold in Japan in the previous fiscal year.
And the 3DS had plenty more big hitters during the quarter too.
Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon sold 1.43 million units worldwide, while
Tomodachi Collection sold 1.39 million units in Japan. Nintendo says that
Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D has also been well received.
Nintendo says that it is finally making good headway in the overseas markets, gaining sales momentum in the U.S. and Europe. The company says that this is down to releasing key Nintendo titles one after the other.
Overall, the Nintendo 3DS sold 1.4 million hardware units during the quarter, and 11.01 million software units.
The Nintendo Wii U, on the other hand, isn't looking so hot. The console sold just 160,000 hardware units worldwide during these three months, and 1.03 million software units.
Nintendo says that this is down to offering only a few key first-party titles on the console as-of-yet. To put the figures into perspective, the original Nintendo Wii is still outselling the Wii U -- the Wii sold 210,000 hardware units, and 3.67 million software units during the quarter.
But Nintendo has a plan. The company says that it will soon flood the Wii U with key first-party titles, like
Pikmin 3, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD, Wii Party U, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Super Mario 3D World and
Wii Fit U, and it hopes this will boost hardware sales.
It is hoped that this will spur the Wii U on to sell by the bucketload, and have 9 million hardware units sold in total by the end of March next year.
As for the 3DS, Nintendo will continue to throw more first-party titles at the handheld too, with games like
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team and
Pokemon X & Y on the way.
For the quarter ended June 30, revenue was 81.5 billion yen ($832.7 million), down 3.8 percent, while profits were 8.6 billion yen ($88.1 million), up compared to losses of 17.2 billion yen ($175.9 million) year-over-year.
