Nintendo shores up losses, Wii sales down

Nintendo Co said on Wednesday sales of its Wii game machines totaled 710,000 in the April-June first quarter compared with 1.56 million a year earlier.

The creator of the Super Mario franchise sold 540,000 DS handheld consoles in the quarter compared with 1.44 million in the same period year earlier. But it sold 1.86 million of its 3DS consoles compared with 710,000 a year earlier.

It stuck to its sales outlook for Wii game machines of 10.5 million for the year to next March and its DS handheld consoles at 2.5 million.

It also stuck to its sales forecast for its 3DS handheld game consoles, saying it expects to sell 18.5 million of them.

Nintendo also said on Wednesday it posted a smaller first-quarter loss helped by income from software, although diminished sales of its games consoles weighed on results.

The creator of the Super Mario franchise posted an operating loss of 10.3 billion yen ($132 million) for the three months ended June 30 compared with a loss of 37.7 billion yen a year earlier. That was better than an average loss forecast of 20.6 billion yen from three analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

For the full business year to next March, Nintendo stuck with a forecast for operating profit to rebound to 35 billion yen. The company expects sales of new software titles such as the latest version of Dragon Quest from Square Enix to underpin income.

That forecast compares with a consensus forecast of a 32 billion yen profit from 21 analysts.

Article courtesy of BusinessTech – Nintendo posts smaller Q1 loss

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Tags: 3DS, active, Nintendo, square-enix, wii