Nintendo's Wii U sales disappoint

The Wii U console, which Nintendo expects to reverse its fortunes, has seen disappointing sales

Sales of Nintendo's latest games console, the Wii U, slowed in the three months to June.

The company sold just 160,000 units of the Wii U, as overall sales fell nearly 4% to 81.5bn yen ($832m; £549m).

Nintendo has sold 3.61 million units of the Wii U so far. The company said that it still expected to sell nine million Wii U units by March 2014.

Nintendo also reported a profit for the latest quarter, helped by the weaker value of the yen.

It reported a net profit of 8.6bn yen ($88m; £58m) for the three months to June, compared with a loss of 17.2bn yen in the same period a year ago.

A cheap yen boosts profits when earnings for Japanese exporters are repatriated.

'Key titles'

Nintendo launched the Wii U in November last year, but titles for the console have seen delays in development.

The company says it is hoping a slew of new games titles will boost sales.

"For the Wii U system, we will attempt to concentrate on proactively releasing... key titles, from the second half of this year through next year to regain momentum for the platform," the company said in a statement.

The company had previously lowered its sales goal for the Wii U, which has a touch screen tablet controller called GamePad and allows TV viewing.

Analysts said the coming holiday period would be crucial for Nintendo, a time when many gaming companies see their strongest sales.

Video game companies have been suffering as people increasingly play games on their smartphones and other devices.

Nintendo, famous for video game titles such as Donkey Kong and Super Mario, left its earnings forecast of 55bn yen for the year to March 2014 unchanged.