Nintendo reports its first annual loss in 30 years
Nintendo has some bad news to share today for once. They’ve posted their first annual loss in 30 years, but it was less than they expected it to be. In the past financial year Nintendo has lost 43 billion Yen, when converted to Australian dollars that’s 510 million dollars.
Nintendo originally predicted it would lose about 65 billion Yen in previous forecasts but strong software sales and the Japanese Yen being devalued helped them lose less. Nintendo did well with the 3DS, 13.35 million of them were sold in the period bringing the grand total sold to 17.1 million. There have also been 36 million 3DS games sold during this financial year. DS and Wii sales were down with only 5.1 million DS units sold, bringing the total sold to an impressive 151 million. Wii hardware sales were more with 9.84 million sold bringing its grand total to 95 million.
Nintendo hopes to have the Nintendo 3DS back to generating a profit by the middle of the current financial year (September) as every system they sell currently is losing them money.
Nintendo’s not used to losing money and we’ve seen them in panic mode since they dropped the price of the 3DS last year. They’ll be back to making money in no time, we hope.
I’m sure they will be. It’s pretty understandable though. They are at the end of their cycles of both handheld and home console and trying to propel the 3DS into people’s hands as well as launching the WiiU soon, and undoubtably developing some big new games, money wouldnt be coming in hard and fast like in the past. And money will have to spent to make these consoles sell. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t turn a profit next year either, however if all goes well, by 2014 the money should be rolling back in again. Although by then the new Sony and MS consoles could be making an impact. By the looks of things the Vita isn’t causing much trouble for the 3DS, but I can see problems in years to come for the WiiU.
I’m not saying there will be no worthwhile games for it, or that it will suck or whatever, I just have my doubts that it will sell well. To Nintendo fans, sure. We will pick one up. All the casual mums and grannies who bought a Wii for WiiSports and WiiFit, not so much unless Nintendo have another casual killer app under their belts. The true hardcore gamers who buy every console will buy, but not the so called “core” Call of Duty/FPS audience that the big 3rd party publishers are all vying for. They will be sticking to their Xbox’s and PS3’s and awaiting the release of the follow up to those HD consoles. Which brings us to the younger market. I know I would prefer my son to be playing Smash Bros and Mario games over yet another war or futuristic FPS. As usual with Nintendo consoles they make the perfect family console, but probably not until a price drop or two into the systems life. Tablet and smart phone gaming is growing. The market is very segmemted. In a perfect world there would be room for everything, but I’m not so sure. In any case, I don’t believe this is a big deal. When they lose money for 5 years in a row, then I may be worried.