Nintendo financials fall 50% short of target, ¥7 billion profit in 2012

Nintendo has posted full-year profits of ¥7 billion for 2012, which is half of the company's ¥14 billion projection. Regardless, this is an improvement over last year's loss of ¥43.2 billion. The projection slump has been attributed to weak global sales of both Wii U and 3DS .

GI.biz reports that Nintendo has only sold 390,000 Wii U consoles worldwide in the past three months, while lifetime 3DS sales have surpassed 31 million.

Overall Nintendo has posted sales of ¥635.4 billion ($6.3 billion / £4.1 billion) which again falls short of the company's January projection of ¥670 billion. There was also an operating loss of ¥36.4 billion ($364 million / £239.5 million).

Nintendo had expected to sell 4 million Wii U consoles by now, but it fell short at 3.45 million units. To date it has sold 13.42 million games for the system. By comparison Nintendo has sold some 95 million 3DS games to date and 14 million 3DS handhelds in 2012 alone.

Surprisingly, America was Nintendo's top-performing region, with net sales totalling ¥236,665 million, with European sales of ¥169,887 million and Japanese sales of ¥208,944 million following.

The company now predicted it will sell 9 million Wii U consoles in financial year 2014 and 38 million games on the format. It also expects 3DS console sales to hit 18 million and predicts it will sell some 80 million games.

Projected net profits for financial year 2014 are now ¥55 billion and sales of ¥920 billion, suggesting Nintendo has some big IP on the way. We're yet to see a new, 3D Mario game on the format, and there is also Pikmin 3, Zelda Wii U and a new Smash Bros. to look forward to.

The report says of new software, "During the next several months, Nintendo expects to launch new titles in the Mario Kart (Wii U), Super Mario Bros. (Wii U), Wii Fit (Wii U), Pikmin (Wii U), The Legend of Zelda (Wii U and Nintendo 3DS), Mario & Luigi (Nintendo 3DS) and Pokémon (Nintendo 3DS) franchises.

"These games, along with titles from Nintendo's third-party publishing partners, will help drive hardware momentum and introduce new audiences to the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS platforms."

Software stats show that New Super Mario Bros. 2 was Nintendo's big win for the year at 6.42 million units sold worldwide, while Animal Crossing: New Leaf has sold - in Japan alone - over three million units, suggesting it could be a huge smash once it launches globally.

Here's an infographic with more stats. Let us know what you think of the numbers below.