Nintendo has posted its financial results for the first quarter of financial year 2013/14 and although its net income is looking much healthier year-on-year, global sales of the Wii U console have hit an all-time low.

The Japanese company sold only 160,000 Wii U consoles between April and June inclusive. Since launch, it has sold 3,610,000 Wii Us, but in the months in which its major rivals both announced next-generation machines for sale from the end of this year, it has struggled to sell its own top of the line console. To put it into perspective, it sold more units of the original Wii, 210,000 of them.

It is doing far better with the Nintendo 3DS handheld console, selling 1,400,000 in total in the last three months. The recently launched 3DS XL makes up for 990,000 of them.

Nintendo's net sales, all hardware and software combined, came in at 81.5 billion yen (£548.3 million) which is only slightly down year-on-year; Q1 2012 net sales were listed at 84.8 billion yen. Its net income, however, has risen from a loss of 17.2 billion yen last year to 8.6 billion yen profit this. Unfortunately, operating income still represents a loss, of 4.9 billion yen.

Nintendo still maintains that the Wii U's future will be determined by the release of first-party titles, many of which are scheduled for 2014.