Nintendo Discloses Wii U Game Console and Software Shipments Projections

From X-bit Labs: Nintendo this week announced financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2012, and also outlined its expectations regarding sales of its next-generation video game console and supporting software. Despite of the fact that the Wii U console is brand new and will likely be a target for hardcore gamers this holiday season, Nintendo does not expect to sell too lot of them this fiscal year.

Nintendo expects to sell around 5.5 million Wii U game consoles as well as 24 million of video games for Wii U worldwide by March 31, 2013, the company revealed in its financial release this week. It is noteworthy that by the same date the firm plans to sell another five million of its previous-generation Wii game systems. By contrast, Nintendo expected to sell 12 million Wii game systems in the second half of its fiscal 2011 (October, 2011 – March 31, 2012), which means that at present Nintendo is very conservative about Wii U success.

The reasons behind cautious predictions of Wii U sales are not completely clear, but they could include components shortages, production issues, macro-economic weakness and many others. Still, only 10.5 million of non-portable consoles set to be sold throughout H2 FY2012 rather point to macroeconomic problems. Moreover, the prediction likely does not take into account the fact that the Wii U will likely be popular among both core gamers (who are not affected by general trends) as well as amateur gamers initially.

“For the second half of this fiscal year, we continue to focus on selling "Nintendo 3DS" and aim to make "Wii U" spread from the beginning of its launch scheduled for this year-end sales season. We strive to expand our business by providing games and services which make use of the features of those hardware systems,” a statement by the company reads.

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