Nintendo’s Profits Are Up, But Still Missing Sales Targets

Nintendo announced it made $350 million during the last fiscal year, meaning this is the first time it reported having an annual profit in over four years.

Nintendo Life reports that the House of Mario revealed its financial results for last fiscal year. As you would expect, recent hits for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U along with the launch of the New 3DS helped the company rise to profit. From April 1, 2014 to March 31, 2015, Nintendo made roughly $350 million. While this is certainly great news for the Mushroom Kingdom, Nintendo still missed its projected sales targets, narrowly.

Here's what Nintendo's financial report states:

During the fiscal year ended March 31, 2015, for "Nintendo 3DS (3DS, 3DS XL, 2DS, New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL)," "New Nintendo 3DS/New Nintendo 3DS XL," launched as the newest members of the "Nintendo 3DS" family, got off to a good start and continued to sell well, while the sales of the "Nintendo 3DS" hardware prior to the launch of "New Nintendo 3DS/New Nintendo 3DS XL" did not grow as anticipated, and the global sales of the "Nintendo 3DS" family hardware were 8.73 million units.

As for the "Nintendo 3DS" software, "Pokémon Omega Ruby/Pokémon Alpha Sapphire" and "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" enjoyed robust sales with 9.94 million units and 6.75 million units sold respectively, while titles such as "Tomodachi Life," "Mario Kart 7," and "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D" also showed steady sales, with all three titles selling more than 2 million units each. There were also a number of hit titles from third-party publishers. As a result, the global sales of the "Nintendo 3DS" software were 62.74 million units. With respect to "Wii U," Nintendo released two hit titles, "Mario Kart 8" and "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U," which enjoyed robust sales of 5.11 million units and 3.65 million units respectively. These titles continued to perform well especially overseas, and the global sales of the "Wii U" hardware and software reached 3.38 million and 24.40 million units respectively.

As you would expect, Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros., the latest Pokemon titles, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D and the New Nintendo 3DS XL all helped Nintendo do well. At the same time, we know that games like Splatoon and the new Star Fox won't be able to recreate this same success for this new fiscal year (no matter how impressive they look), especially with the Wii U's Legend of Zelda game put on hold. Then again, we have a feeling Nintendo's mobile gaming initiative with DeNA will likely do well.