Nintendo made a good start to the 2013 fiscal year recording profits for Q1 thanks to strong Nintendo 3DS software sales worldwide.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the Nintendo 3DS gave Nintendo a massive boost, selling 1.19 million in the U.S. and Europe, and 1.54 million overall worldwide. That’s on top of the over 3 million units it sold in Japan in the previous fiscal year.
There were other big sellers in Q1. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon sold 1.43 million units worldwide, while Tomodachi Collection sold 1.39 million units in Japan. Nintendo says that Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D has also been well received.
Nintendo believes it is finally making good headway in the overseas markets, gaining sales momentum in the U.S. and Europe. The company says that this is down to releasing key Nintendo titles one after the other.
Overall, the Nintendo 3DS sold 1.4 million hardware units during the quarter and 11.01 million software units.
The Nintendo Wii U, on the other hand, isn’t looking so hot. The console sold a measly 160,000 hardware units worldwide between April and June and 1.03 million software units.
Nintendo says this is due to a lack of key first-party titles on the console. To put the figures into perspective, the original Nintendo Wii is still outselling the Wii U — the Wii sold 210,000 hardware units, and 3.67 million software units during the same period.
But Nintendo has a plan. The company says that it will soon flood the Wii U with key first-party titles, like Pikmin 3, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD, Wii Party U, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Super Mario 3D World and Wii Fit U, and they believe this will boost hardware sales.
The company hopes to have sold 9 million hardware units total by the end of March 2014.
As for the 3DS, Nintendo will continue to throw more first-party titles at the handheld too, with games like Mario & Luigi: Dream Team and Pokemon X & Y on the way.
For the quarter ended June 30, revenue was 81.5 billion yen ($832.7 million), down 3.8 percent, while profits were 8.6 billion yen ($88.1 million), up compared to losses of 17.2 billion yen ($175.9 million) year-over-year.