The Nintendo Wii U continues to sell poorly

Although Nintendo swung to profits for the first half of the 2013 fiscal year, the company admitted that its Nintendo Wii U console is still selling rather poorly, and adversely affecting its overall operations. Only 460,000 Wii U consoles were sold worldwide in the first six months of the current fiscal year. Since we already know that 160,000 of those were sold in the first quarter, that means that around 300,000 Wii U consoles were sold for the quarter ended September 30. Nintendo was unable to hide its disappointment in its financial quarter report, noting that the releases of Pikmin 3 and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD have done little to turn the tide for the console. "The Wii U hardware still has a negative impact on Nintendo's profits," the company said, adding that advertising, research and development for the console is also dragging the company's earnings down. The console has now sold 3.91 million units worldwide in total. But it wasn't all bad news, as the Nintendo 3DS continues to sell well. Tomodachi Collection for the 3DS sold 1.63 million in Japan, while Animal Crossing: New Leaf surpassed 2.49 million units worldwide for the fiscal year. As a result, the Nintendo 3DS has now sold 3.89 million hardware units this fiscal year, with 34.98 million 3DS handhelds sold to date. The company expects this number to jump over the current quarter, thanks to the release of Pokemon X & Y, the release of the Nintendo 2DS, and the holiday period in general. And the company is hoping that the upcoming release of Super Mario 3D World is going to boost Nintendo Wii U sales during this quarter. For the six months ended September 30, 2013, Nintendo posted revenues of 196.5 billion yen ($2.0 billion), down 2.2 percent compared to 201.0 billion yen ($2.05 billion) year-over-year, and profits of 600 million yen ($6.1 million), compared to losses of 28.0 billion yen ($285.2 million) year-over-year.