The rumor mill predicts a loss of over a billion dollars over the second half of 2011.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/rumor/28231
Nintendo will post a loss of ¥100 billion tomorrow (approximately $1.31 billion), according to Japanese newspaper Nikkei. The loss is for the period of April 2011 through September 2011. According to the report, the loss is mostly attributed to the value of the yen against the Euro, and amounts for ¥40 billion of the rumored loss. In comparison, for the same period in 2010, Nintendo posted a loss of just over ¥4 billion.
The predicted loss for the period was ¥55 billion, making the rumored final figures almost double what was predicted. Andriasang notes that it is unclear how much of the report was Nikkei's analysts doing the math themselves.
Nintendo will reveal its earnings for the period in Japan on October 27.
I'm suddenly reminded of that scene in "What About Bob?" where the house explodes and its two formers owners are on the boat on the lake shouting "BURN! BURN!" and laughing. :P: :
With the way that the Wii's been left out in the cold this year in NA in favor of the 3DS, I can't say I'm not enjoying this and hope that Nintendo sees several more quarters like it (if only to see them completely humbled for the first time since the Wii launched). Still, the 3DS price drop, Zelda, and Christmas will probably allow them to salvage this current quarter. I'd look for them to post modest profits unless the 3DS just completely dominates over the Christmas season.
I do not see anything but Mario 3D Kart having a chance of pushing 3DS units this season. Does IOS gaming have anything to do with this? I mean Level 5 just announced that the Layton games are being ported to the Iphone.
So in previous results, it was the Yen vs. the Dollar that caused their losses. Did they recently convert a bunch of holdings into Euros?
This makes me wonder if Nintendo might actually give in and release Operation Rainfall titles?
I had read that they had a bunch of holding in US Dollars a while back.Right. What's confusing me is that this report specifically says Euro. I'm trying to figure out why that's relevant now.
That could be the reason for the major losses as the dollar is almost toilet paper at this point.
Nintendo's got lots of money everywhere. ;)That's my point. The euro hasn't tanked especially compared to the dollar, so I don't understand why they specifically said that unless it's just because of the general Eurozone financial crisis that's been a focus of the press lately.
This makes me wonder if Nintendo might actually give in and release Operation Rainfall titles?
It's not a big surprise, but for Nintendo it's a loss of prestige and by extension, Iwata also shares. When a company can run for 132 years without an annual loss, when it does happen, that history makes it a big deal. Iwata should be sweating bullets at this point. We all know what happened to Gunpie Yokoi and his mistake was far less than this.
I feel Iwata ruined Nintendo and turned them into the exact sort of company I used to praise them for not being. I would love to see his ass canned.
If NoA had not been allowed to run the Wii brand into the ground then do you think Nintendo's financial situation would be a little less severe?
If NoA had not been allowed to run the Wii brand into the ground then do you think Nintendo's financial situation would be a little less severe?
I don't see why not. Over the course of the Wii's lifespan, we've missed out on occasional games from time to time here in NA, not just the Operation Rainfall games. I'm talking about things like New Play Control Pikmin 2, Disaster: Day of Crisis, Fatal Frame IV, etc. Some of these games were released in Europe in English. Now, none of these would likely be big sellers for Nintendo in America, but at minimal cost to do so (Fatal Frame IV notwithstanding since that never had an English version) it would have been pretty easy for NoA to fill in some of those massive software gaps and keep the Wii just a little bit more relevant. Depending on the additional costs for replication and marketing, I could see them turning a modest profit on these games.
And any profit NoA could have made but chose not to would have helped improve this financial report, especially since NoA is Nintendo's most profitable region.
@ Ian SaneI don't agree about Apple but I'm going to leave it there.
Amen. Nintendo needs to learn the meaning of "fan service." The other companies such as Sony, Microsoft, Apple and all the third parties atleast try to appease their customers to some extent. Granted that they to are money grubbers like Nintendo, but if any deals with any non-Nnitendo systems and games do they feel ripped off, cheated and abandoned?
We might get every game if this financial free fall is as bad as the posts say it is. Xenoblade could still be released in spring of next year and Last Story and Pandora's Tower along side the European releases.
I feel Iwata ruined Nintendo and turned them into the exact sort of company I used to praise them for not being. I would love to see his ass canned.
In favor of who, exactly? Who would you rather have running Nintendo corporate instead of Iwata? I'm not overly fond of him myself, as I think he's allowed NoA to run the Wii branding into the ground by not releasing Wii software and he didn't do a good job of attracting 3rd party Wii support. Plus, I find him very dull and unconvincing to listen to during speeches, though not as fake-sounding as Reggie.
That said, despite some lapses in judgement he's done a pretty good job with Nintendo in his tenure, and it's hard to imagine anyone else with the business skills and leadership to lead Nintendo forward.
It was going to bite them in the ass eventually. It had to. Now it has. Good. I feel Iwata ruined Nintendo and turned them into the exact sort of company I used to praise them for not being. I would love to see his ass canned.
I also want someone who truly respects their customers and wants to please them. Nintendo does not come across as caring if their customers are actually content. It's just as long as they get their business. So I want someone that wants to please us. They want to provide us with options and ensure that the game selection on their systems truly covers all bases and has the top third party games on it.
But who is this person? I don't know. They need someone who adores videogames but also has good business sense.
Okay, I've got a bit of schadenfreude going here. For years Nintendo's boneheaded decisions have affected us, their customers, but not them. All their stupid obvious avoidable ****-ups screwed us out of third party support but they still made a profit. There was no real incentive for them to improve because they still made money. I didn't want them to go out of business but I really wanted them to feel the pinch for once to force them to get their **** together.
Well here it is. The arrogance of consistently making fistfuls of money while their fans deal yet again with an undersupported system and all sorts of unnecessary restrictions and limitations took them to 2011, when they released jack **** for their old systems and released a new handheld which also had jack **** for it. This was the "we can do anything, we're industructible" attitude taken to its extreme. The whole Wii seemed like a big "**** you". "We can released half-baked ****, refurbish the Gamecube and make no effort in attracting developer support and make MORE MONEY THAN EVER! HA HA HA HA HA!!"
It was going to bite them in the ass eventually. It had to. Now it has. Good. I feel Iwata ruined Nintendo and turned them into the exact sort of company I used to praise them for not being. I would love to see his ass canned.
Isn't Sony also based in Japan? So how is it that this exchange rate stuff hurts Nintendo really bad but not Sony? Microsoft is based in the U.S. so I guess they are probably immune to it.I wouldn't say Immune but, from my understanding Sony has a more sales in Japan plus, they have other divisions they can do some accounting tricks with.
