Nintendo stays the course despite flagging sales and profits

Nintendo's financials for the quarter ended June 30, 2016, are out, and sales and profits have both taken a hit. 

The company reported a net loss of 24.5 billion yen ($232 million) for the first quarter, while net sales are also on the wane, falling to 61.96 billion yen ($586.8 million) from 90.2 billion yen ($854.2 million) -- a year-over-year decrease of 31.3 percent. 

Flagging Wii U sales attributed to that sales dip, with Nintendo revealing its home console only sold 220,000 units -- 53 percent less than it managed this time last year. 

The 3DS is in better health, but still couldn't match last year's effort. Instead, sales of Nintendo's handheld fell by 7 percent year-over-year to 940,000 units. 

Those performances meant Nintendo could only bring in revenues of 25.1 billion yen ($237.7 million) from hardware sales, as opposed to the 44.6 billion yen ($422.4 million) it raked in last year.

Looking at the games themselves, 3DS software sales were up by 7 percent, with Nintendo flogging 8.47 million titles worldwide in the first quarter.  

It was a similar story on the Wii U, with software sales for the console rising 3 percent year-over-year to 4.68 million. 

Despite those year-over-year sales improvements, software revenue still dropped to 34.9 billion yen ($330.5 million) from 44.4 billion yen ($420.5 million). 

Adding those sales to the pile, lifetime Wii U and 3DS hardware sales now stand at 13.02 million and 59.79 million respectively. As for software, lifetime sales currently total 88.72 million on the Wii U and 282.65 million on the 3DS.

Going forward, Nintendo says it has enough in its locker to stay the course, citing the upcoming releases of Pokemon Sun and Moon and the financial impact of Pokemon Go as reasons to be optimistic. 

It also believes its 3DS business will be "re-energized" thanks to a number of third-party offerings, and that the release of Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing titles for smartphones will "create new demand" -- adding to the 1.6 billion yen ($15.1 million) its smart devices segment brought in this quarter.

With that in mind, Nintendo isn't revising its current financial forecast, and is still projecting profits of 35 billion yen (314.7 million) and net sales of 500 billion yen ($4.5 billion) for the end of this fiscal year on March 31, 2017.