Wii Shipments Top 75m, 600m for SW, DS tops 135m - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 28 October 2010 / 4,939 Views
Nintendo's results for the six months ending September 30, 2010 have just arrived. It was a pretty slow quarter for the company. Revenue reached 363.16b Yen for the first six months of the March 2011 year. That is down from 548.058b Yen over the same period last year. At 81.7 Yen to the dollar, Nintendo's revenues were only $4.5 billion in the first six months of the current fiscal year, down from $6.7 billion over the same period in 2009. Nintendo posted a loss of 2.011 billion yen ($24.6m loss) for the first half of the fiscal year, on large, non-corporate based risks that went sour in the June quarter. In the previous fiscal year, Nintendo had a 69.492 billion Yen profit over the first six months, about $850 million in profit at current rates. That said, Nintendo's September quarter must have just about offset the huge (25.216b Yen loss / -$283m at July exchange rates) June quarter loss to get the six month figure to near even, and so Nintendo is profiting again and on target to hit its revised monetary targets. In other words, Nintendo profits were about $250m for the September quarter going by April to September minus April to June results, since Nintendo only totals its earnings cumulatively by quarter for each fiscal year.
Nintendo shipped 1.93m Wiis for the quarter, the first sub-2m quarter for Wii hardware ever. Nonetheless, Wii hardware shipments now stand at 75.9m units lifetime through September 2010 and should top 80 million units by the end of the year. Nintendo still expects Wii hardware shipments to reach 17.5m units for the year to March 2011. For DS, Nintendo has now shipped 135.58m DS systems lifetime through September 2010, meaning 3.54m DS systems were shipped during the quarter. That is a slight pick up from the previous quarter, presumably because of Pokemon and the recent DS price cuts.
On the software front, Nintendo noted how its top software performed over the first half of the fiscal year. For Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 2 shipments are 5.1m units through September 2010, and Nintendo reconfirmed that Wii Party was a million-seller in the September quarter from Japanese sales alone. For DS, Pokemon Black / White shipments reached 4.07m units - and once again the title only launched in Japan during the quarter. Nintendo also slightly raised its software forecast to 138m units for Wii from 135m units (neither figure includes bundled software, which will be about 30m units this FY because of the two western bundled games and the new bundles in Nov).
Lifetime to date software shipments figures for Wii stand at 610.04m units lifetime through September. That is a 37.04m unit increase from the previous quarter - rather impressive as no more than 4m units of bundled software shipped for the quarter with hardware shipments so low. The Wii now has an attach rate of 8.037 units per console on a shipment basis (610.04m games / 75.9m Wiis) - and obviously with WW and VC that figure would be higher still. DS software shipments reached 773.34m units lifetime through September 2010, an increase of 32.41m units from the June 2010 quarter - with about 15% of that from Pokemon alone. DS remains Nintendo's largest software ecosystem ever, but Wii is slowly catching up as the massive DS base buys fewer and fewer games. With DS hardware shipments at 135.58m units, the DS attach rate is 5.70 games shipped per DS system worldwide through September 2010. Regionally, the DS software market stands at 306.62m / 49.28m DS units in the Americas, 190.00m / 31.55m DS units in Japan, 276.73m / 54.75m DS systems in Others. For Wii, the splits are at 334.45m / 35.91m Wiis in the Americas, 221.92m / 29.2m Wiis in Others, and 53.67m / 10.79m Wiis in Japan.
Overall, DS is approaching GB hardware figures in Japan, and now rivals NES / SNES software figures in Japan. Wii remains Nintendo's biggest software market ever in the Americas and the best selling Nintendo console worldwide, and especially outside Japan and the USA. Looking at Nintendo's software history visually, it is pretty clear that Wii is going to destroy the software figures DS reaches in the Americas and Others, as Wii software is within 50m units of DS software in Others with 25m fewer users, and ahead of DS software in the Americas with 15m fewer users.
More updates to come - including Sony and Microsoft - later today.
Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com
More Articles
If you're Iwata, and you have the choice, would you rather be stuck with 1-2m extra Wiis you can't sell over Oct-Dec because you stuffed like crazy to avoid a first half loss or whatever or would you rather have a situation where only 500,000 are in stock and then sell through rises back to 500,000 + week like we know it will in Nov and Dec when you're already going to sell a ton of Wiis? I'm saying they likely could have forced more Wiis into the channel if they wanted but they seem to prefer doing it over Oct-Dec.
Nintendo isn't stupid, if they thought there was a realistic chance they'd only sell 6m Wiis over this quarter based on speaking to retailers they would have lowered their projection for Wii again rather than try to explain why they're trending for 14m instead of 17.5m after Christmas when its too late.
Whats interesting about Wii is the seasonal rises from Sept Q to Dec Q are getting higher. It was +50% in 2007, +100% in 2008, and +200% in 2009. This year, with all the software still coming, the Mario bundles (1m Wiis there alone), and retailer price cuts I don't see why +300% is impossible (roughly 2m --> 8m, rather than 3.5m --> 11.3m last year), with perhaps a major title or early 2011 price cut to get to 17.5m.
You can see it with Microsoft too - hardly shipped any more Slims than they sold because they had to clear the channel of old units, supply Slim units...but they also want to be able to put alot of Kinect-bundled X360s in the channel.
Wii shipments shoudl hit at least 82M-83M by end of year, could be higher if they sell quite well this christmas.
Carl my figures assumed they'd stuff the channel ahead of Christmas - they didn't. Nintendo cleaned the channel this quarter, which means they can sell tons of Wii now.
Anyone know when the investor briefing is?
Guys, easy on the console wars... Anywho, nice sales for both products, and the software is great too (happy to see Galaxy 2 doing well!). I'll celebrate seeing Wii and DS continuing to do well in the marketplace, and for all the great games coming out for me to enjoy! :D
The Wii cold stop selling hardware and software tomorrow. The HD systems still won't be able to catch up to it.
Wait how much was Wii adjusted down?
@haxxiy
LOL.....ya doomed. Lets see the yearly sales. Wii= 9,105,075, PS3= 7,278,150, Xbox= 6,957,028. And Ninty will kill at Christmas.
So is this what HD fanboys have sunk to? "Well the Wii continues to kill us in yearly sales, however we did manage to outsell them a couple weeks out of the year" It just goes to show that when you put out a good product, you don't have to do very much and it will still sell. Give it a rest HD fanboys.....u cant catch up.
I think it might be interesting to note that over 50% of those Wii software shipments are from Nintendo themselves though.
flagstaad - I can agree with MH3, but that was in March, what have they done since July? There's Kirby, but they went artistic (read autistic) with it, Donkey Kong I can give credit to, but does it still draw, or is it a niche market like Metroid? Goldeneye could be big, will have to see on that one.
Just feels sorta lackluster this year, that they should do more to kind of rub the Wii in the face of its competition despite them coming out with motion controls. Seems like the other systems have a more exciting 2010 going for them.
Wii is so domed these days. Another adjustment downwards I'm afraid. Time to party HD fans!
@Raze:
Monster Hunter Tri, color change and motion plus inclusion were done to mantain sales, and for the rest of the year...
GoldenEye exclusivity, Kirby's Epic Yarn, DKCR, Flingsmash, motion plus inside the Wiimote.
I think they have done very good things, only that not all are interesting to all players.
@Raze
DKCR?
Maybe I'm alone in this, but does anyone else feel like Nintendo just kinda sat on their butts this year regarding the Wii? There really hasn't been a lot of effort to keep up with the HD systems regarding marketing etc. What have we got for the last have of 2010? A metroid game (which has a niche market) and another party game? They should have expected a loss, as they've done little to keep the momentum up in 2010.
Woo, go SMG2! 5.1 million shipped before October. Little undertracked maybe?
You reap what you sew Nintendo, how does it feel to get a taste of your own medicine coming from Apple?
Ehh, I took a crack at it using some figures I found and a currency calculator. Looks like Nintendo profited about 285.5 million dollars in July-September. So Mazel is right about the "hundreds of millions".
Which is a lot till you look at Apple and Microsoft profiting 3-5 billion every quarter...
After the estimations you made based on VGC numbers, you had the Wii at over 500k higher. Does this mean we can expect a downward adjustment of any kind?
And the DS is aso probably overtracked by a Million or possibly 2?
How come nobody reports the profit for the last quarter? It's just a small loss for the last 6 months. Nobody can figure out the figures for last quarter? Nintendo doesn't report profits by quarter?
Anyway, ugly Wii sales, but looking at it they actually still do have a decent chance at 17.5 million for the year, but the Wii is going to have to make a big holiday comeback to make it.
U have done a great Job , thanks for sharing the picture
Yes, looks like Wii LTD numbers on VGC are very accurate. DS figures might be a tad on the high side, but only by 1% or less. Which means the error of the estimate is very low.
Will be interesting to see how the MS and Sony numbers correlate. With PS2 clocking up its 137th million sales last week it'll be interesting to see what Sony gives for shipments for PS2. I guess PS3 might be a bit interesting too.
Has Nintendo made a loss in any quarter since Wii launched? Not that it really matters because I think measuring quarterly profits/loss is ridiculously too reductionists. even half yearly profit/loss reports is too frequent. Should only report updated forecasts for the financial year.
Great job VGC! Very credible figures on you front page. Well done.
