Nintendo predicts first annual loss, lowers earnings forcast

On Thursday, the company announced a loss of $623 million in the nine months that ended December 31, compared to $639 million in profits a year earlier. And the bad news doesn't end there.

[TheGOODKyle]

Hopefully this makes Nintendo wake up and produce more quality games. How many do they have in the past 5 years for the Wii? 5?

[optimus]

actually i think they've had more quality games but due to the lack of advertising they get buried in the mix of the usual headliners.

[tokugawa]

leave it out, they are just about to release new hardware! i think it is obvious why they have announced a loss.

[GribbleGrunger]

a loss always sounds more exciting than 'made less profit' it's not as if they're losing anything, they're just not making as much money as they were in the hay days... but could that ever be sustained anyway? i doubt it.

and as tokugawa so rightly pointed out, the WiiU is just around the corner so of course Nintendo know that the Wii sales will slow even further. i hate these articles. every year and every week is the same.

for instance a game is released and sells well in it's first week, second week sales always slump and then we have headline like: '*insert title* dropped 45% in sales'. BORING. this headline could literally fit any game ever released and yet for some reason it becomes newsworthy

[kneon]

@GribbleGrunger

What do you mean it's not as if they are losing anything? They are expected to lose $837,000,000. That's pretty significant.

They have spent more than they expect to make, that's losing money. I didn't see anything about the loss being due to writedowns or other accounting magic so it appears to be a real loss.

[GribbleGrunger]

they don't lose that money. it's not like someone is taking that amount of money out of their pockets. see it as someone putting less money into their pockets. they still gain, but not by as much. less of a gain is not a loss in the truest sense. Nintendo wouldn't say they lost money this year, they'd say they didn't make as much profit as they'd hoped. that's as plain as i can make it, so i hope you understand lol

how can anyone disagree...? lol. you lot just want a loser and a winner and not business sense

@Kneon: lets say you invest £100 into shares of a company and the following year that £100 investment gets you £150 back. now lets say the following year that £150 gets you £175 back. that's loss in terms of expected numbers but it still gives you a profit on your initial £100 investment. that should so it!!!

[kneon]

No, they will have lost money, they will have $837 million dollars less than they did before so they will have lost money.

When you spend more than you make you lose money, it's that simple. They will have less money than when they started the year, how can that not be losing money?

[optimus]

I don't know what numbers Gribblegrunger is reading into as it clearly says that this is the 1st year they "are operating at a loss". i guess it's just wishful thinking on his part. they're not saying that they're going bankrupt otherwise they wouldn't release the wiiU this year. the fact is nintendo is in a bit of trouble not just on the console side but handheld as well...

face it; they were #1 at a time when there wasn't much in terms of competition, now with all the smartphones and tablets flying around that sell for equal if not less of the price of a gaming handheld and with games retailing for a few dollars for those it's hard to keep that lead in that market...just look at the apple numbers in the same article; they're in the billions in profit.

can nintendo make a comeback? sure, but it will have to be by offering something for less that delivers more than those phones or tablets.

[4agemO]

Now they're on $ony's turf. Good luck Ninty.