Sales of Nintendo Wii U and Nintendo 3DS flagship game consoles last quarter were lower than expected, as a result, Nintendo decided to lower its shipments targets for the whole fiscal year. Apparently, Nintendo admits that sales of its hardware are decreasing and the company expects the trend to continue. Interestingly, while hardware shipments get lower, Nintendo not only returns to profitability, but expects to improve it.

The worldwide sales of the Nintendo Wii U hardware since the launch on November 18, 2012, were 3.06 million units and those of the Wii U software were 11.69 million units. Nintendo sold 830 thousand Wii U consoles in Japan, 1.32 million in North America and 900 thousand in other regions, primarily Europe. If earlier Nintendo expected to sell 5.5 million Wii U consoles in fiscal year 2012 (ends on March 31, 2013), then according to revised forecast the number is reduced to 4 million.

Nintendo has also sold 12.710 million 3DS consoles this fiscal year and reduced forecast for the year to 15 million units; in addition, the company shipped 7.050 million 3DS XL consoles. Therefore, the overall 3DS platform (3DS+3DS XL) seems to be pretty successful.

For the nine months ended December 31, 2012, Nintendo posted revenue of ¥543 billion ($6.0 billion), down 2.4% year-over-year, and profits of ¥14.5 billion ($159.7 million), compared to losses of ¥48.3 billion ($531.6 million) for the same period of the previous fiscal year.

Nintendo changed its revenue prognoses for the full fiscal year, down to ¥670 billion ($7.4 billion) from the previously estimated ¥810 billion ($8.9 billion). At the same time, the company boosted its full-year profits expectations to ¥14 billion ($153.8 million) from ¥6 billion ($75.2 million).

Tags: Nintendo, 3DS, Wii U, Wii, 3DS XL