Earlier in the week, I blogged about the problems of marketing Wii to a new audience of non-gamers and about 'disappointing' sales of Super Smash Brothers, as reported by the NY Times. Well, hey, is turns out Nintendo doesn't have much to worry about. The company has reported its financial results for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2008. From the jubilant press release:
Nintendo posted sales of more than 1.67 trillion yen (just over 16b US dollars), an increase of 73 percent over the prior year. Nintendo also reported FY08 operating profits of more than 487 billion yen, a year-over-year increase of 115.6 percent.
During the year, the company shipped 18.61 million Wii consoles and 30.31 million DS handhelds. So Wii shipments stand at 24.45 million and DS at 70.6 million.
As for software:
Nintendo also forecasts shipment of 177 million Wii software units for FY09, while the FY08 shipment was 119.6 million units. Through March 31, 2008, Wii enjoys a life-to-date tie ratio of 6.07 games per system worldwide.
So yeah, they should be okay. Panic over.
