Nintendo sold 160,000 Wii U’s in three months ending June, is outsold by Wii

Only 160,000 Wii U consoles were sold worldwide in the quarter ending June 2013.

The staggering figure eclipses the fact that Nintendo actually posted some improved numbers for the period with net income and operating income both improving.

Net sales for the period hit 81,548m, down from 84,813m the year before. Operating losses fell from 10,331m last year to 4,924m. Last year’s net loss of 17,231 was reversed, resulting in net income of 8,624m.

But Wii U’s performance is the headline grabber here. Amazingly, Wii U was outsold by its predecessor the Wii – that shifted 210,000 units in the period. Software sales for the two machines were 1.03m and 3.67m units respectively.

Note that in the same period Microsoft sold 1m Xbox 360s. And Apple sold 31.2m iPhones.

The company still predicts 9m Wii Us in its current financial year ending March 2014.

Nintendo, as is seemingly always the way with its home consoles, blamed the lack of first party software releases for the performance. It says that it now strives to improve sales by communicating the compelling nature of our hardware and software to as many people as possible through Miiverse”.

It added that it also strives to improve hardware profitability by reducing its costs”.

3DS continues to perform well, at least, with hardware and software sales of 1.4m (up 12 per cent) and 11.01m (up 10 per cent) units respectively for the period.

Japan accounted for a smaller slice of Nintendo’s global sales than last year, falling from 39 per cent to 36.3 per cent. Europe grew slightly from 25.8 per cent to 26.1 per cent with America growing from 30.2 per cent to 34.4 per cent.