Nintendo: 5.84 million Wiis sold

Nintendo today released its year-end sales figures, meeting its revised numbers and setting goals for its next 12 months. In addition to backing up the perception that the Wii and DS have already done gangbuster business for the publisher, the company's report also included its future expectations for the systems.

Perhaps most notable among the company's projections is the expectation that it will sell 14 million Wii systems and 22 million DS units in the next year. According to Nintendo's year-end results, since the Wii's launch in November 2006, the publisher has sold 5.84 million of the systems.

In the meantime, the DS, which launched in November 2004, has racked up sales of 40 million systems, more than half of which have been of the revamped DS Lite, which went on sale in Japan in March 2006, with US and European launches following that June. That puts the DS hardware sales (original and DS Lite combined) past the halfway point of the Game Boy Advance family's hardware sales (GBA, GBA SP, and GBA Micro) of 79 million. Comparing the DS to Nintendo's other previous generation creation, the GameCube, Nintendo has already sold more DS Lites (more than 21 million) than GameCubes (not quite 21 million).

Nintendo also said it expects DS game sales of 130 million over the year, along with 55 million Wii games. DS game sales are approaching 184 million over the system's lifetime, just over half of the Game Boy Advance systems' 366 million games sold to date.

For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2007, Nintendo raked in nearly 967 billion yen ($8.09 billion) in sales, up almost 90 percent from the year before. It also pulled in a net income of 174 billion yen ($1.45 billion), up 77 percent from the prior year's take.

While the company expects its growth to slow in the current fiscal year, it's still predicting a significant boost in sales of almost 18 percent to 1.14 trillion yen ($9.53 billion). However, Nintendo's profits will be similar to last year's, as it is projecting less than 1 percent growth in net income to 175 billion yen ($1.46 billion).

The company also addressed its strategies for pushing the DS and the Wii in the coming year. "By positioning [the DS] as 'a machine that enriches the owner's daily lives [sic],' Nintendo aims to accelerate the current sales momentum of Nintendo DS from 'must-have for every family' to 'must-have for everyone,'" according to the company's financial report.

As for the Wii, the company said it "will further intensify Wii's 'Channel' concept which already includes the abilities for the Wii owners to create their caricatures, view weather forecasts, news, and surf the web. Wii will encourage communication among family members as each of them can feel something relevant to themselves and be motivated to turn on the power everyday in order to enjoy 'the new life with Wii.'"