Splatoon, Amiibo drive Nintendo's swing to first-quarter profits

Nintendo beat analyst expectations this week when, rather than recording a loss for the first quarter of its fiscal 2016 year, the company posted a tidy profit. 

The company reaped 1.14 billion yen ($9.28 million USD) in profits from 90.22 billion yen ($728.86 million) in sales for the three months ending June 30th.

That's an improvement over the 9.47 billion yen ($96.9 million) in losses it reported for the same period last year; moreover, it's Nintendo's best first-quarter sales since 2012.

Kyoto-based Nintendo says 72 percent of those sales came from overseas markets, and attributes its vibrant first-quarter performance in part to favorable exchange rates and to "favorable sales of amiibo" continuing apace. 

The company noted strong sales of Splatoon for the Wii U, which has sold more than 1.62 million units worldwide since it was released in May and got a lot of things right in terms of game design.

Nintendo also quietly reported that it sold its 10 millionth Wii U during the quarter, which encompassed sales of 470 thousand Wii U consoles and 4.55 million units of Wii U software worldwide. 

Despite the better-than-expected quarter, Nintendo did not revise its forecast for the 2016 fiscal year and still aims to bring in 50 billion yen in profit by the end of next March.