Look at these 3/4 year fiscal numbers for Nintendo which ends Dec. 31, 2006. Their net profit was $1.1 billion USD, which is up 43 percent from the same nine month period last year! Nintendo’s net sales rose 72.8 percent while operating income is up 102.5 percent! The new DS Lite and the launch of the Nintendo Wii have driven these record profits numbers.
With their huge success in both Japan and the USA, Nintendo is still struggling to meet demand. The DS Lite continues to sell out in Japan and still remains the hottest selling hand held in the USA. The Nintendo Wii is still selling out two months after it’s initial launch. Recent polls showed only around 12 percent of national resellers have Wii’s in stock while 83 percent has Playstation 3’s. Nintendo can’t manufacture their systems fast enough. There have been 4 Million Wii’s made so far with 3.19 million making it into distribution by the end of 2006.
Hardware isn’t the only success story for Nintendo though in 2006. Nineteen of Nintendo’s titles have surpassed the one million units sold mark worldwide. Three titles were Wii and 13 titles were Nintendo DS and three were Gameboy Advance.
The Wii has 1.4 million of the 3.19 million in distribution connected online, so that’s a little less than half. This rivals Xbox Live adaptation which has been around for five years. Microsoft certainly didn’t see that kind of success the first two months after Live launched five years ago. Nintendo DS is having it’s own success in the online space too with there being 3.5 Million games played over WiFi so far and more than 100 million connections.
Hats off to Nintendo. They know what they do well and keep doing it, gamers love them for it. They may be the underdog in the console battle but they’re winning.
