Despite a hefty loss, Nintendo says its 3DS system is still in-line with forecasts. We've also got Wii and DS numbers...

Alongside its gloomy earnings report, Nintendo has released the latest sales data for its systems, and perhaps to your surprise, the 3DS seems to be cause for most positivity.

For Q2 - that's July through September - Nintendo shifted 2.36 million 3DS systems worldwide. That was well up from the 0.71 sold through April to June, bearing in mind the price cut coming into effect in August. So far then, the 3DS has sold 6.68 million units worldwide since its release at the start of the year. Software sales were down slightly this quarter, but nonetheless 17.56 million units of 3DS software has been sold since launch.

Interestingly, while the trend throughout the report was certainly 'revising down', Nintendo has not adjusted its expectations made last quarter for full-year sales of the system. 16 million hardware units are still forecast to be sold worldwide by April 2012. However, full-year 3DS software sales were revised down from 62 million units to 50 million.

Indeed, there is just a glimmer of hope that the 3DS has now turned a corner. Eurogamer notes that the Nintendo DS had managed to sell just 6.65 million units after its first seven months on shelves. Of course, no two consoles' lives are ever the same, and it may not be terribly informative to draw comparisons, but it does suggest just how much the legacy of a system can temper expectations for its successor.

Moving onto the Wii, and it would seem Nintendo's little white box of wonders has had a fairly flat fiscal year so far. Just 3.35 million systems have been sold since April. Software sales rose slightly for Q2, but for the fiscal year so far, just 36.45 million games have been sold. This is tracking well behind previous years, and the figures are more reminiscent of the console's first year on shelves. Full-year hardware expectations were revised down a million to 12 million, while software sales were revised down to 100 million from 120 million.

For DS, Nintendo's decision to push its 3D successor is becoming jarringly evident. Just 2.25 million systems in the DS family have been sold since April, with the last quarter being the worst in the system's history - just 1.14 million between July and September. Software sales are also down on previous years - 28.99 million software units shifted since April. Nintendo has revised full-year predictions for DS software down by five million to 62 million, and lowered the hardware forecast from 11 million to a staggeringly low 6 million.

A bit of analysis on those DS numbers - it is interesting that the scale of the sudden drop-off is almost certainly a result of Nintendo 'consciously' killing off the brand; illuminated quite well recently by an aggressive 3DS marketing campaign. With earnings at their lowest point for years, it was quite plausible that Nintendo might have bottled out of doing this - profit mark-ups for DS hardware are gargantuan compared to the loss-making 3DS. It must have been tempting to opt to milk the DS in the face of 3DS uncertainties. Perhaps Iwata meant it when he spoke about the long-term health of Nintendo's platforms over short-term gains.

But let us not mourn Nintendo's passing systems. The report noted that lifetime sales for the Wii stand at 89.36 million, while DS currently sits at 149 million. All things considered, that is impressive by anyone's standards.