Despite fairly steady handheld sales, Nintendo's Wii U has struggled to gain a foothold in the market and is in part responsible for the company reporting annual operating losses for three consecutive years.

The company ended up 46.4 billion yen ($457 million) in the hole with 23.2 billion yen ($228 million) in net losses. The company's flagship home console saw a 20% drop in sales during the quarter ending in March 2014 compared to the year prior, selling only 310,000 units during that time.

Sony has already moved more of its newest generation Playstation 4 consoles than Nintendo has with Wii U. Even with a full year head start, Nintendo has only sold around 6.17 million of its home consoles, compared to Sony having sold 7 million PS4's as of April 6th.

As many have suggested, the Wii U's arguable light library of content is one of the main causes of weak sales numbers, and it sounds as though Nintendo feels the same way. The company expects to get back in the black by the end of fiscal year 2014 largely due to its upcoming titles. At this point the only confirmed major first party games on the way from Nintendo are Mario Kart 8 and the new Super Smash Bros, but it's likely we will hear more from the company come E3 next month.

While Super Mario 3D World released to excellent reviews, it didn't manage to make much of a difference to Wii U sales the way Nintendo is likely hoping Mario Kart 8 will. The long running racer sold almost 35 million units on its last outing for the Wii and has currently sold around 8 million copies of the latest 3DS version.