Nintendo has report its financial results for the 9-month period between the 1st of March and the 31st of December, 2010. The results indicate the company suffered from an overall loss of sales of approximately 32%, with only 15.7 million Nintendo DS handhelds sold (against 23.3 million over the same period a year earlier) and around 13.7 Nintendo Wii’s (against 17 million between March and December 2009). The loss of sales resulted in a dramatic drop in profits, ending up at just short of $600 million, which is 74% lower than profits over the same period last year.
In response to these figures, Nintendo announced it had adjusted the forecasts for the remainder of the year. Over the next three months, the company apparently expects it will recover some of the lost sales experienced in previous months, and eventually end up selling a total of 22.5 million DSs sold and 16 million Wii sales.
On the other hand, the company has raised expectations regarding software sales. The total number of DS titles Nintendo has been increased to 120 million over the period between March 2010 and February 2011, up from 110 million. With regard to Wii-software sold, Nintendo has raised expectations by 32 million, for a total of 170 million titles sold. This year, software sales were mostly driven by titles such as Super Mario Galaxy 2, Pokemon Black/White, New Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong Country Returns.
I am sure they will start to print money again when the 3DS is released. Pre-orders in Japan are pretty much sold out, and there is a lot of hype going on in the internet about the release of the system. Also, Pokemon will sell a lot of copies, so that is another big revenue stream.
I await this time next year to see what their financial reports are after the 3DS has been out for awhile.
Yeah Nintendo isn’t going away any time soon. Though I kind of hope things go badly for them, perhaps that would force them to rething their strategy and refrain from producing the same damn game over and over again.
Mats, I present you the Game Cube. That is what made them chance strategies.
But yes, it is time for Nintendo to create some new IPs for us gamers. That way we can get something new, and they can use those characters in Smash games. But really, I want a new Mother/Earthbound game.