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Submitted by darkride66 393d ago | news

Nintendo slides to massive loss as revenue falls off a cliff

The game company saw its revenue slide by 36.2 percent during the fiscal year that ended March 31, pushing the previous year's profit into a huge loss.
The 3DS and Wii could do nothing to save Nintendo during its most recent fiscal year.
The company today released the results of its fiscal year that ended March 31 (PDF) and revealed that revenue slid 36.2 percent compared with the previous fiscal year. Nintendo ended its year with revenue of 647.6 billion yen (about $8 billion), versus over 1 trillion yen in the prior year.
Due to sluggish sales, Nintendo posted a net loss for the year of 43.2 billion yen ($532.5 million). In the prior year, it had generated a profit of 77.6 billion yen.

Nintendo's troubles over the year were numerous. For one, the company was forced to sell the Nintendo 3DS portable below cost in order to attract customers. This meant that the iconic game firm took a hit on every unit sold. Meanwhile, sales of Nintendo's Wii console continued to drag, and the company's software franchises were off the mark on the year. Add that to a strong yen, and Nintendo could do little to turn things around. (3DS, Industry, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Wii, Wii U)

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himdeel  +   393d ago
Can you say Market Saturation coupled with a healthy dose of why do we have this Wii thing again.
Hisiru  +   393d ago
Massive loss? Lol... it was expected by Nintendo and it's not "massive" The results are better than what they were expecting. Something is wrong with the title.
#1.1 (Edited 393d ago ) | Agree(8) | Disagree(20) | Report | Reply
jony_dols  +   393d ago
Losses of more than half a billion dollars are pretty damn substantial for any company, regardless of how big they are.
shackdaddy  +   393d ago
Don't get why people disagreed with you. The annual loss was lower than what they predicted. I think saying "revenue slides off a cliff" is a bit of an exaggeration especially considering the damage that the yen had this year.
#1.1.2 (Edited 393d ago ) | Agree(9) | Disagree(9) | Report
WrAiTh Sp3cTr3  +   393d ago
It's not as bad as Sony's situation...
KonaBro  +   393d ago
lol
What does Sony have anything to do with Nintendo losing profits? Salty much?
ronin4life  +   393d ago
They are also expecting a return to profitability by next years earnings briefing.
And like I said before, in the previous year Nintendo made nearly twice what they lost this past year.
"Massive losses" is over exaggerated all things considered, as it sounds like there are no layoffs and this is a one time thing in the past 30 years.
#1.1.5 (Edited 393d ago ) | Agree(2) | Disagree(4) | Report
Denethor_II  +   392d ago
@Hisiru

" The results are better than what they were expecting. Something is wrong with the title."

Don't you mean "than 'we' were expecting".
Where did all these Ninty fanboys come from all of a sudden? lol.
morkendo23  +   393d ago
This meant that the iconic game firm took a hit on every unit sold. Meanwhile, sales of Nintendo's Wii console continued to drag,

Sound like 60gb ps3 first started off taking a hit every console back in 2006
#1.2 (Edited 393d ago ) | Agree(2) | Disagree(0) | Report | Reply
Fel08  +   393d ago
Games in general are just not selling too well nowadays. But if Nintendo play their cards right and do the right promo for the Wii U, and have a nice line up of games when the console gets released, I see it being successful. Probably not as successful as the Wii, but remember, people were bashing the Wii left and right before it came out, and look how it turned out.
ozstar  +   393d ago
Ridiculous

Just look at the sales of MK and Mario Land 3D.
cone   392d ago | Spam
fermcr  +   393d ago
After so many losses from the first Xbox and the X360 RROD, who would of thought that out of the console manufacturers, only Microsoft would be presenting a profit in their gaming division by this time, and have been for a few years now.
#3 (Edited 393d ago ) | Agree(8) | Disagree(6) | Report | Reply
BitbyDeath  +   393d ago
Microsoft aren't the only ones.
cone   392d ago | Spam
darkride66  +   393d ago
Wow. We had heard speculation about Nintendo's reversal of fortune, but to swing from a profit of 77.6 billion yen to a loss of 43.2 billion yen in one year - that's not a dip, that's a collapse. Their fire sale on the 3ds is killing them compared to the the profits the DS brought in day one. But what can they do? They need to establish the install base or developers are just going to pack it in and at least they think the 3DS hardware will be profitable 6 months or so down the line.

And even though they hope things will pick up, their own forecasts only call for $250 million for the next fiscal year. Investors aren't going to be happy with that. Good thing the company is flush with cash still from old Wii/DS sales. But if the Wii-U underwhelms (and they're already saying the thing has to sell at $350 just to break even) what then, Nintendo? Mario on the PS3? Are you going to go the route Sega went?

Edit below: I didn't say that was going to happen. I speculated at what could happen if the Wii-U doesn't take root and the 3DS continues to underperform outside of Japan. What do you think will happen if those two scenarios play out? Nintendo will just ride it out until next gen like nothing is happening? And I'm not the first one to suggest that Nintendo could greatly profit by licensing out their top franchises. You know what kind of crazy amounts of cash Nintendo could rake in if they put out a Mario game on the ipad/iphone, for example?
#4 (Edited 393d ago ) | Agree(6) | Disagree(20) | Report | Reply
Fel08  +   393d ago
Did u just say that Nintendo is going in the same route as Sega and "Mario on the Ps3"? Wow, that just shows you have no idea what you are talking about.
shackdaddy  +   393d ago
What's with this "Mario on the PS3" comment? SONY is doing pretty bad too. $6.4 billion bad - about 12x the loss Nintendo had.

I guess here on N4G when SONY losses $6.4 billion, they'll be alright but when Nintendo losses $5.3 million for the first time in history, they are all the sudden doomed... smh

Edit @ your edit: Lol. Dude, 3DS is doing great worldwide. It's one of the top selling hardware everywhere. And that idea with licensing to iphone is completely stupid. Nintendo has a handheld. Why would anyone buy their handheld and pay $40 per game if they can use their iphone and pay $5 per game? THAT would doom them. I'm sure glad you aren't running Nintendo...
#4.2 (Edited 393d ago ) | Agree(17) | Disagree(4) | Report | Reply
erasure242  +   393d ago
Mario to PS3? LOL... um... Compared to the Sony's loss this year Nintendo's 43 billion Yen loss is not that bad... Sony more than doubled its projected net loss for the past financial year to ¥520 billion...

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012...
mr_badhand  +   393d ago
Nintendo's first loss in three decades and you are already worried, predicting doom, going on about investors and suggesting they should license out their hot IP's.

Sit back and relax Darkride, Nintendo has billions upon billions in the bank. This is no different from any other company taking a hit in this economy.
Tenkay23  +   393d ago
If nintendos loss of $523 million is massive, then wtf do you call Sony's loss of $6 billion?
sidar  +   393d ago
"ouch"
Jihaad_cpt  +   393d ago
what hardcorehippiez said below. You cannot compare the 2. Sony employs way more people and their losses are spread over a lot of divisions.
hardcorehippiez  +   393d ago
yea but sony's loses comes from their entire devisions , tv 's walkmans , phones ect. their gaming devision is profitable. nintendoes is entirely gaming related and being down is not good when your 2 competitors are both up. dropping the price of the 3DS to compete with the vita is hurting them.
Emilio_Estevez  +   393d ago
What you lack in grammar you make up for with common sense.

Losing money on every 3DS is a good and bad. They are selling, so people will inevitably buy more games, but they are taking the front end loss, while hoping for back end profit.

Comparing the Sony (or MS)and Nintendo's situations are a little different. Nintendo only does gaming while the other 2 do mostly non-gaming. Can't recall for MS, but Sony's losses were not related to their gaming, as the kind hippy said.
hardcorehippiez  +   393d ago
im a musician not an english professor but i do see things clearly. i didnt say nintendo is doomed or anything but lowering the price has hurt them. they will bounce back tho which is good because my kids love their nintendo.
PopRocks359  +   393d ago
Actually I read a report recently that the 3DS will become cheap enough to manufacture to sell at a profit again by the beginning of Fall this year. Given its current units/sale rate, that's not so bad in the long run.

http://www.gamasutra.com/vi...
#6.1.2 (Edited 393d ago ) | Agree(2) | Disagree(0) | Report
ronin4life  +   393d ago
Sony has lost 90% of their company over the past 10 or so years. Losing money year over year.
Nintendo loses in one year half what they made the year prior. This is their only loss in 3 decades.
So no, they aren't comparable. But Sony's loss is still far worse.
#6.2 (Edited 393d ago ) | Agree(6) | Disagree(7) | Report | Reply
hardcorehippiez  +   393d ago
i didnt say that sonys wasnt worse did i . as a collective sony is in trouble, that much is plain to see. however their gaming devision isnt and neither is microsoft while nintendo is. that is a problem but not one they cant overcome.
ronin4life  +   393d ago
I suppose this is true. ^_^
Though I think they have already started overcoming it.
Ck1x  +   393d ago
What's so careless about throwing these numbers around is, yes Nintendo lost revenue from a year on year earnings prospective. But its very misleading to think that they still didn't make a massive profit though... There are unknown factors that we have no knowledge of and one being what is Nintendo's overall yearly operating cost? On paper yes Nintendo lost revenue from a year on year earnings, but lets say their overall operating cost is 2billion dollars and they still ended the year with earnings of 8billion dollars, then things aren't as bleak as they seem...(just putting some random numbers in there for comparisons sake.) Remember for as bad as people are trying to make this seem, Nintendo didn't start slashing jobs after they reported this news...
DeadIIIRed  +   393d ago
The net income portion of the statement is their profit, which is negative. This includes all revenues, costs, interest payments, taxes, etc.

Also, Nintendo didn't slash jobs, but they sold a lot of assets this year.
Ck1x  +   391d ago
My bad, i dont claim to be a financial guru but as someone else has stated, the press just seem to look for anything bad in light of nintendo news
#7.1.1 (Edited 391d ago ) | Agree(0) | Disagree(0) | Report
DeadIIIRed  +   391d ago
The world feeds off bad news unfortunately. I'm not too worried about Nintendo because I believe I saw that they have a large cash reserve. They can afford years like this, but not too many and at the risk of losing investors.
DeadIIIRed  +   393d ago
This financial statement just screams bad news.Why did they issue 100 yen dividends if they were expecting a loss? I don't know how they plan to post a 200% increase in net income in one year by relying on 3DS sales (which they state they sell below cost) That means that Nintendo is relying on its software sales and late-in-the-year Wii U sales. Even then, their own projected sales figures don't seem to be enough to break even.
ronin4life  +   393d ago
I thought iwata said last year that the loss on 3ds systems would end this current fiscal year.
They should start to be profitable soon if this is true.
DeadIIIRed  +   393d ago
They would have to control costs since a price hike after a slash is out of the question, but that is much easier said then done. Even then their profitability will still most likely rely on software sales. It isn't a bad model (Amazon's Kindle strategy is very similar), but they have a lot of work to do this coming year.
Arius Dion  +   393d ago
The funniest thing in all of this is that just a week prior Sony reported losses of what 6billion? But apparently Losing half a billion dollars causes such an uproar where as Sony's losses aren't catastophic.

Welcome to the bizarro world of N4G. When was the last time Sony wasn't in the red btw? This is Nintendo's first operating loss in its existence. And there's good reason for that too, Nintendo made some bad business decisions, abandoning two cash cows Wii/DS, banking heavily on 3D and not pumping out the proper software needed to sell the hardware.

I've no dog in this fight, but call a spade a spade. Don't try to sensationalize Nintendo's recent losses and then try to marginalize Sony's abysmal financial situation.

I remember a time when people just gamed.
BubloZX  +   393d ago
Nintendo is only a gaming division.
the 6 billion loss for sony was for all of their other divisons beside the playstation divison.
PopRocks359  +   393d ago
So then let's do some math. Nintendo's loss is about half a billion. Sony's is six billion. Nintendo's loss is pretty much a fraction regardless. Am I really expected to believe that you can marginalize Sony's profits based on the fact that they make more than just game hardware? I reckon that would mean that their sloppy business practices extend into their other divisions.

Also, Nintendo's never sold at a loss and has made profits on all of their consoles, including the 64 and the GCN. The 3DS is the very platform to be sold at a loss due to its price cut (which according to a report will become irrelevant between April and September of this year since the technology will be cheaper by then).

Suggesting that Nintendo is financially unstable is ludicrous.
BubloZX  +   393d ago
When you compare sony's total assets with nintendo's the 6 billion doesn't look as bad as nintendo's half billion.
Xof  +   393d ago
Oh no! My emotional state is intrinsically linked to the financial health of my favorite megacorporation! Quickly, I must devote an inordinate amount of time and effort to devise rhetoric downplaying this news to preserve my fragile ego!
BitbyDeath  +   393d ago
Nintendo are fine, no doubt they are ramping up production on their next console which is bound to set anyone back, that coupled with losing money on the 3DS and Wii slowing is all this would be.

They'll bounce back at years end.
#11 (Edited 393d ago ) | Agree(5) | Disagree(4) | Report | Reply
Shnazzyone  +   393d ago
Whatever, nothing compared to the losses Sony is experiencing right now. Of course you'd never hear about that news tidbit on this site because it wouldn't be able to pass approval. Meanwhile, last I checked. Nintendo always has losses to report before a new console launch because of so many resources being invested into that launch. They are pumping everything into Wiiu(or whatever it's called). Nothing to be concerned about.
ozstar  +   393d ago
Its confirmed, HD Gaming is killing Nintendo.

There's been a threefold hit on them with the 3DS price drop, the WIIU R&D and the Yen.
Studio-YaMi  +   393d ago
I've never seen so many Nintendo fanboys at one place,I mean seriously are you guys THAT much insecure to just slam SONY's name in every comment here and there ? the topic is about Nintendo losing half a billion,not Sony losing 6 billions !

Sheesh,grow up you (financial advisors) you :| ...
BitbyDeath  +   393d ago
On top of that Sony's gaming division made a profit, the 6 billion are from other areas.
Yet the trolling continues.
tweet75  +   393d ago
wow imagine how nintendo would look without mario or zelda

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