Opinion: The best news from Nintendo’s results? Lots of people are playing Splatoon

By Hugh Langley

Nintendo’s third-quarter results are in and they’re a mixed bag. Net profit tumbled by 36% compared to the same period last year, but sales were pretty stable, falling just 3.9%.

Fine. Whatever. We hardly expected to discover that the Wii U had made a surprise overnight surge and outpaced PS4 sales. But there is some much better news here, the best of which, in my opinion, is that Splatoon has done excellently, selling 4.06 million copies worldwide so far.

To put it in perspective, that’s more than Bloodborne and The Order: 1886, two of the PS4’s major first-party titles, combined.

Splatoon isn’t the only one going strong. Super Mario Maker, which launched in September, has sold 3.34 million copies, while Mario Kart 8 has sold 7.24 million since May 2014.

But it’s Splatoon which should have Nintendo and its investors celebrating today. The latest financials once again reflect that legacy franchises are bolstering the company right now, but even those have been drip-fed to the Wii U.

Nintendo has long needed a new IP, but launching one on the Wii U, a console with a relatively small user base (currently at 12.6m compared to the PS4’s 36m) …read more

Source:: techradar.com – Gaming