Pokémon and Seattle Mariners sale boost Nintendo profit

Nintendo's latest financial report is a positive one - and it's largely thanks to the strength of Pokémon.

The company's recent sale of its majority stake in the Seattle Mariners baseball team also earned it a healthy one-off boost.

Pokémon Sun and Moon are the real success story of the quarter - and indeed of the whole financial year. Combined, the games have sold 14.62m units since their launch in mid-November.

Older games such as Pokémon X and Y have also continued to sell, boosted by the ongoing popularity of Pokémon Go. An extra 1.2m copies of X and Y have been sold this financial year, despite it originally releasing in 2013.

3DS hardware sales were up - it shifted 6.45m 3DS handhelds and 46.8m games the three months ending 31st December, a year-on-year increase for both stats.

But while the 3DS performed well, the Wii U continued to fade away. Nintendo sold just 760k Wii U consoles over the period - a 75 per cent drop on last year. Game sales fell 45 per cent to 12.48m.

Curiously, Nintendo declined to detail exact sales of the NES Classic Mini, other than mentioning its "widespread popularity". Nintendo's mobile division was also brushed over, with exact revenues from Miitomo and Super Mario Run left undisclosed.

But the real test will come in Nintendo's next financial results, which will include the first few weeks of Nintendo Switch sales. All eyes will be on how well the company's big new hardware hope lands.