Wii U Sales: Console Shows Progress But Does Not Meet Nintendo's Expectations

By Vincent Funaro, Christian Post Reporter Friday, January 17, 2014

Nintento's president Satoru Iwata released a statement regarding the sales of the Wii U and 3DS this week and discussed the strong points and shortcomings of both systems.

The Wii U showed a bit of progress, according to Satoru who felt that some of the bundles Nintendo created and other deals helped the overall sales of the console.

"Wii U sales, on the other hand, showed some progress in the year-end sales season as we released various compelling titles from the summer onwards, launched hardware bundles at affordable price points and also performed a markdown of the hardware in the U.S. and European markets; however, they fell short of our targeted recovery by a large margin," he said.

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He also states that sales in the U.S. and European market which the company entered into at the end of the year with a hardware markdown were lower than their original forecasts with both hardware and software sales experiencing a huge gap in their targets.

"In addition, we did not assume at the beginning of the fiscal year that we would perform a markdown for the Wii U hardware in the U.S. and European markets," he continued. "This was also one of the reasons for lower sales and profit estimates."

The 3DS fared quite well in the Japanese market, but did not reach the company's target overseas.

"However, outside Japan, while its market share increased as we continued to release compelling titles throughout the year, Nintendo 3DS did not reach our sales targets in the overseas markets, and we were ultimately unable to achieve our goal of providing a massive sales boost to Nintendo 3DS in the year-end sales season," said Satoru.

Despite not living up to expections, the 3DS still managed to be the highest-selling console in the U.S. for Dec. 2013.