Nintendo's Wii U sales struggle

This week Nintendo will release its crucial third-quarter sales results and reveal how Wii U fared during its initial two months on sale. The company had promised to ship 5.5 million Wii U consoles by the end of March and end the financial year back in the black, thus avoiding a repeat of last year's damaging loss - the first in the company's history.The loss was described as a blip that occurred as Nintendo price-dropped the 3DS and wrapped up costly research and design on the Wii U. It was a cost the company would not repeat, Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata told investors. But profits for this year have already been revised down. In October, Nintendo forecasted a new, slimmer earnings margin for the year, with the Wii U's early success playing a critical part. It's this early performance that we can now try to evaluate, with the console launched and already past its first holiday sales season.Nintendo UK has remained silent about Wii U sales, but MCV reported first-weekend results of 40,000 consoles. It's a modest sum compared to other launches constrained by the level of stock allocated to the UK, although what did filter through to shop shelves didn't entirely sell out.Eurogamer has been told by UK numbers firm Chart-Track that, after five weeks on sale, the Wii U's initial sales figure counted for 50.1 per cent of the system's total. This indicates that Wii U sales in the UK were at the 80,000 units mark at the beginning of January. It's a huge drop-off in sales momentum after the console's initial weekend on sale, but one that is typical of other UK hardware launches: pre-orders and pent up customer demand will always make for a huge first week and, by comparison, first-week sales for the original Wii counted for 50.4 per cent of its sales total after the same five-week period. For Xbox 360 it was 54.6 per cent, and for PlayStation 3 it was 71.7 per cent.Wii U numbers as a whole are far less than other recent home console launches. We know that PlayStation 3 sold 165,000 units over its opening weekend in the UK, so another 29.3 per cent of sales would count for 48,345 units - pushing its five-week total to 208,000. Xbox 360 sold 70,000 in its opening weekend, so therefore sold 101,000 over five weeks. Finally, the Wii sold 105,000 units in its opening weekend, meaning in five weeks it had sold over 210,000. This leaves the Wii U, in the UK at least, lagging some way behind. But it's important to note that launch sales are just that. In the UK the PS3 outsold Xbox 360 by 2:1 at launch, but Microsoft's console has ended up selling significantly more than Sony's over its lifetime on these shores.

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