Nintendo trebles predicted loss

This year is meant to be the year where the world ends, yet, it looks like it’s going to be the second of two terrible years for Nintendo unless things start to pick-up, and fast. Today Nintendo announced it’s close of quarter performance and adjusted it’s predicted losses up, by three.

Earlier last year, Nintendo announced that it expected to end the financial year with a 20 billion yen loss (£165 million) and it’s now revised those figures, not up a little, but up by three times to 65 billion yen (£535 million). This significant raise in debt was delivered alongside less then stellar performance where Nintendo announced decline in net sales of 31%.

There are various economic factors that have contributed to Nintendo’s losses, with the March disaster in Japan being one of them, the continued strength of the Yen against the Dollar, Pound and Euro, the European Debt Crisis and more of an internal price point problem – the Nintendo 3DS.

With the huge price cut of the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii’s price being reduced, it’s led to far less profit per console being reaped in. Whereas the DS was flying off the shelves during an economic boom, the 3DS has been released during a down and that’s going to cause problems in itself.

However, the 3DS has now sold 15 million units worldwide and the Wii sold just under 9 million units in the first three quarters of this financial year.

Nintendo have specifically noted that Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 over both sold over a million units each and Skyward Sword has now sold just shy of 9 million units worldwide.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has confirmed that the Wii U will be available by the end of 2012 in “key selling markets”.