It’s quite obvious it’s not an easy time to be a big business at the moment with companies like HMV and THQ falling onto hard times, but it appears that Nintendo has started a resurgence in profit this year after the company posted its Q3 financial profits for 2012 which shows the big N returning to profit.
Now the full financial year is still underway but with Q3 2012 results in it shows that Nintendo is currently up around $159m for the period of April to December 2012, which is a big swing around from the 2011-2012 financial year where Nintendo posted a huge loss of $530 million.
What the results also reveal is some sales figure for the company’s latest next generation console, the Nintendo Wii U, which has pretty much been the turnaround point for the gaming giants. The sales figures state that as of December 2012, the Wii U had sold 3.06 million units worldwide, which given the short period the console has been on sale (since October 2012), is not bad doing.
Sales of the Wii U break down to around 1.32 million in North America, 900,000 in Europe and 830,000 in Japan. Additionally, the original Wii console is still selling healthily (thanks to its sub-£100 price drop) and it sold 3.53 million during the April to December period.
The company does have goals set out for the year, some of which it will surely miss with the company previously stating that it aims to sell 5.5 million Wii U consoles before the end of March, but it has now revised this target to 4 million.
Ninty had set out an aim of 24 million games sales but will now be looking at 16 million as only 11.69 million have been sold so far. However, sales of the 3DS are up as hardware sales for the 3D handheld console rose by 11% and software is up by a whopping 41% year-on-year.
See also: Nintendo confirms The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD remake for Wii U
So it’s good and bad news for Nintendo, but with 2013 seeing some big name games releases and announcements the company should have a very, very good 2013.