Nintendo has released its latest quarterly earnings, revealing both good and bad news. The company has been forced to slash its forecasts of sales of both 3DS and Wii U for the end of the fiscal year (31st March 2013), but crucially, Nintendo has returned to profit following an unprecedented run of losses.

Nintendo posted total net sales of just over 543 billion yen for the latter nine months of 2012 (around £3.78 billion). That made a net profit - the first in quite a while - of 14.545 billion yen (around £101.3m), compared to a net loss of 48.3 billion yen (over £336 million) for the same period last year. Due to the depreciating yen, the company now expects to maintain a healthy profit level at the end of fiscal year despite lowering overall sales forecasts: a total net income of 14 billion yen (£97.5 million) is now forecast.

Actual game and console sales were however lower than originally forecast. By the end of 2012, Wii U had sold 3.06 million hardware units and 11.69 million software units worldwide.

Nintendo 3DS sold 7.65 million hardware units in October through December, putting its worldwide total at 29.84m as of the end of the year. 20.53m 3DS games were also sold in this quarter, putting total software sales at 84.99 million.

Wii sold 2.21 million systems in the period, putting total hardware sales at an agonising 99.38m. Software sales were 21.34 million, with the total at 863.53m. Nintendo DS shifted 1.17m hardware units (total at 153.67m) and 12.94m software units (total at 930.55m).

It means that forecasts for total sales by the end of March have been slashed. In October, Nintendo expected to sell 5.5 million Wii U systems and 24 million Wii U games in the fiscal year. It now forecasts 4 million systems and 16 million games. Meanwhile, hardware forecasts for 3DS have been slashed from 17.5 million to 15 million, and software sales from 70 million to 50 million.

Worldwide sales for a select few titles were also divulged:

New Super Mario Bros. 2 (3DS) - 5.69m
Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS) - 2.73m
New Super Mario Bros. U (Wii U) - 2.01m
Nintendo Land (Wii U) 2.33m
Mario Party 9 (Wii) - 1m+
Pokémon Black 2 / White 2 (DS) - 7.63m