Nintendo now expects to sell far fewer Wii U systems and has decided to lower the number of expected consoles and games for the rest of the year after lower than anticipated sales over the 2012 holiday period.
According to a new report by Eurogamer, the company's previous goal of 5.5 million Wii U consoles sold by year's end has been reduced to 4 million units. Nintendo also previously predicted it would sell 24 million Wii U games by year's end, but that number has now been reduced to 16 million.
The Wii U was expected to help lift the video game industry as a whole with its promises of kick starting the next generation of video game consoles. The Wii successor was expected to revolutionize the way we play games with its innovative GamePad controller.
The Wii u has only sold 3.06 million units since its launch in November 2012 and only 11.69 million Wii u video games have been shipped.
Nintendo also downgraded its sales expectations for the Nintendo 3DS handheld system, saying it would only sell 15 million units rather than the company's previous estimates of 17.5 million systems.
Eurogamer notes that Nintendo has reduced overall sales expectations by 17.3 percent and that the company now expect to end the year with a loss in operating income. But Nintendo does forecast an end-of-the-year profit due to the recent change in the yen exchange rate.
"Owing to the fact that the Wii U hardware sales have a negative impact on Nintendo's profits, the operating loss was 5.8 billion yen," Nintendo said. "As a result of exchange gains totaling 22.2 billion yen due to the depreciation of the yen at the end of calendar year 2012, however, ordinary income was 22.7 billion yen and net income was 14.5 billion yen."
The best selling games on the Wii U were first-party titles Nintendo Land, which sold 2.33 million and New Super Mario Bros. U with 2.01 million sold.
What do you thing about the Wii U's sales? Do you think this is a sign that the system is failing? Let us know what you think in the comment section below....
