Nintendo Wants to Sell 5.5 Million Wii U Consoles Before March 31, 2013

A new financial report from Nintendo reveals that the video game and hardware maker is aiming to sell no less than 5.5 million of its new Wii U home consoles before March 31, 2013, when the financial year ends for the company, and pair them with about 24 million units of software for the new platform.

The Wii U is set to arrive on November 18 in the United States, November 30 in Europe and eight days later in Japan. Nintendo has not said where it expects to see more sales of the new device.

The console will offer the same or even better computing power than the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and will add a new GamePad controller, which includes touch screen capabilities.

The company hopes that both first-party and third-party developers will use the new features in order to create titles that deliver innovation, which captures the imagination of players and leads to solid sales for both software and hardware.

The estimates for Wii U sales are part of a financial report for the first six months of fiscal 2012, which shows that the company has seen an overall loss of 27.9 billion Yen, which is about 348 million dollars (269 million Euro).

The loss has been reduced when compared to the same period of 2011, but it’s still too high for a company that was used to reporting only profits after the launch of the Wii home console.

Nintendo reports that it has sold around 22 million 3DS handhelds, which is less than it was hoping for, and 64.45 million video games for them.

The company expected the home Japanese market to be much more accommodating to the 3DS than it has been.

The sales total for the soon-to-be obsolete Wii stands at 97.2 million units.