Nintendo Ekes Out $9M Profit As Wii U Sales Cross 10M To Date

It’s earnings day at Nintendo, and the Japanese company surprised watchers by eking out an unexpected, albeit meagre, $8.9 million profit for its most recent quarter of business.

Nintendo sold less than half a million Wii U consoles these past three months, but, nevertheless, that was enough to push the near-three-year-old device’s total sales to date past the 10 million mark. Sony notched that very figure for the PlayStation 4 in just nine months, which shows the gulf between Nintendo, a beloved company among the gaming community, and the leaders in the consumer console space.

That said, considering its slow sales, Nintendo gamers sure are loyal customers — the average Wii U owner has six games and collectively they purchased over 4.5 million titles for the Wii U in the last quarter. Elsewhere, sales of all 3DS models surpassed 2 million, while Wii customers continue to buy up games, with 1.1 million bought during the past three months.

Nintendo, which earlier struck a historic agreement with DeNA to produce mobile games, is sticking to its guns and its original $400 million profit forecast for this financial year. Given the modest start from this quarter and the fact that its mobile games aren’t likely to drop until sometime in 2016, it’s hard to see the company realizing its projection with nothing major in the new release pipeline.