For the first time in its history as a publicly traded company, Nintendo is forecasting an annual loss.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/28241
Nintendo's latest financial report shows that the company is forecasting an annual loss for the first time since they started making video games.
For the six-month period ended on September 30, Nintendo's net loss was over 70 billion yen, compared to last year's loss of only 2 billion yen. Nintendo had previously forecasted a loss of just over 35 billion yen for that same period. Sales for the Nintendo DS and 3DS hardware being lower than expected and yen appreciation relative to foreign currencies were offered as the primary reasons for the missed estimates. These losses, while significant, are substantially less than had been rumored.
In July, Nintendo had predicted exchange rates of 77 yen to the U.S. dollar and 115 yen to the euro. However, the actual exchange rate ended up being 80 yen to the dollar and 106 yen to the euro. 79.2% of Nintendo's total sales were conducted outside of Japan, and the net effect of converting local currency to yen resulted in 52.4 billion yen in exchange losses (about 75% of their total loss).
Nintendo had forecasted sales of 240 billion yen for the six month period, however softer than expected sales meant the actual number was only 215.7 billion yen—10.1% below estimates. Beyond the low hardware sales, Nintendo also explained that the 3DS does not yet have "many hit titles" and a lower number of new titles were released for Wii. Additionally, the price drop of the 3DS has lead to "improving" hardware sales. Nintendo is expecting the release of titles such as Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land to help the 3DS hardware sales to continue to improve.
As for the end of the fiscal year (March 31, 2012), Nintendo is projecting a net loss of 20 billion yen, harshly contrasted against their previous forecast, a profit of 20 billion yen. This is the first time in Nintendo's history that they've posted a loss annually.
Finally, in regards to their end-year sales, the estimates are currently set at 790 billion yen, down from the earlier estimate, 900 billion.
Nintendo had forecasted sales of 240 million yen for the six month period, however softer than expected sales meant the actual number was only 215.7 billion yen—10.1% below estimates.
From what I've been lead to believe in how much money Nintendo has, this news is more significant as a blow to pride and confidence. That, and nasty exchange rate conversions.I'm fairly sure million is the Typo. Personally the easiest way for me is think of a yen like a penny.QuoteNintendo had forecasted sales of 240 million yen for the six month period, however softer than expected sales meant the actual number was only 215.7 billion yen—10.1% below estimates.
Is "billion" a typo?
Can someone break that down into $$$ so that it makes ¢¢¢?
| Net Loss | |¥70,000,000,000.00 | |$921,200,000.00 |
| Last Year | |¥2,000,000,000.00 | |$26,320,000.00 |
| Forecast | |¥35,000,000,000.00 | |$460,600,000.00 |
| Exchange Loss | |¥52,400,000,000.00 | |$689,584,000.00 |
| Forecast Sales | |¥240,000,000,000.00 | |$3,158,400,000.00 |
| Actual Sales | |¥215,700,000,000.00 | |$2,838,612,000.00 |
| Current Forecast | |(¥20,000,000,000.00) | |($263,200,000.00) |
| Previous Forecast | |¥20,000,000,000.00 | |$263,200,000.00 |
| End Year Sales New Estimate | |¥790,000,000,000.00 | |$10,396,400,000.00 |
| End Year Sales Old Estimate | |¥900,000,000,000.00 | |$11,844,000,000.00 |
Can someone break that down into $$$ so that it makes ¢¢¢?
I can see a flood of "Nintendo is doomed!" articles forthcoming from various outlets, but I think the only ones who should be concerned with this are shareholders.
World Wide Economic Depression.
So what I want to know is if things are bad for Nintendo, what are they like for Sony and Microsoft? I think Sony in particular should be hurting bad, especially because of that PSN business a few months back.
At nintendo results meeting, materials confirm kid icarus will be released in japan in jan-mar, new pokenon spring, both not listed intlhttp://twitter.com/gibbogame
I apologize for this in earnest...
NINTENDO IS SITTING ATLEAST A HALF OF A DOZEN WII GAMES THAT THEY REFUSE TO RELEASE EITHER OUTSIDE JAPAN OR IN NORTH AMERICA. WHY THE **** ARE THEY NOT GEARING UP TO PUT THESE TITLES INTO THE HANDS OF THEIR LOYAL FANS AND EARN WHATEVER MONEY THAT IS STILL LEFT FOR THEM TO PILFER ON THEIR DYING CASUAL CONSOLE? THEY COULD ALWAYS SELL THESE DAMN GAMES ON THEIR WEBSITE AND MAKE UP SOME LOST CASH. I MEAN IT IS NOT GOING TO SOLVE THE ISSUE OF CURRENCY FLUCUATIONS, BUT IT WOULD HELP THEM FINANCIALLY AND SAVE FACE ON A COMPANY THAT HAS A BAD REPUTATION OF BEING COY WITH ITS FANS.
I apologize for this in earnest...
NINTENDO IS SITTING ATLEAST A HALF OF A DOZEN WII GAMES THAT THEY REFUSE TO RELEASE EITHER OUTSIDE JAPAN OR IN NORTH AMERICA. WHY THE **** ARE THEY NOT GEARING UP TO PUT THESE TITLES INTO THE HANDS OF THEIR LOYAL FANS AND EARN WHATEVER MONEY THAT IS STILL LEFT FOR THEM TO PILFER ON THEIR DYING CASUAL CONSOLE? THEY COULD ALWAYS SELL THESE DAMN GAMES ON THEIR WEBSITE AND MAKE UP SOME LOST CASH. I MEAN IT IS NOT GOING TO SOLVE THE ISSUE OF CURRENCY FLUCUATIONS, BUT IT WOULD HELP THEM FINANCIALLY AND SAVE FACE ON A COMPANY THAT HAS A BAD REPUTATION OF BEING COY WITH ITS FANS.
The poor exchange rate is definitely the best explanation I've heard for Europe getting the games and NA not getting them.
Sony recently reported that PSN sales were up 14% in the months following the PSN hack (http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/news/a346897/playstation-network-revenue-up-14-percent-after-global-outage-reveals-sony.html) (and Sony's had a good retail software year).
Nintendo's kind of in a weird spot with the 3DS. Smartphones have it beat in terms of practical functionality, and Vita has it beat in terms of extra features that might appeal to the smartphone market. It has all of them beat in price (generally, unless you buy an older phone), but I'm not so sure that's what customers are looking at first and foremost these days.I let my 3 Year old use it all the time as a camera and he sometimes try to play games.
Let me ask this: would any of you 3DS owners give the system to a 7-year-old, or is it too fragile? There's no way in hell I would have given the PSP to a kid, but the DS was unbreakable.
...Really? I don't think I've seen a single ad or commercial for the 3DS. I've seen ones for the DS though. That's some real Marketing fail.
A few other notes is alot of money was spent on re-amping the 3DS--Nintendo spent another 300 million on new commericals/ads whatnot and that alone makes up the loss for the year.
...
Nintendo's kind of in a weird spot with the 3DS. Smartphones have it beat in terms of practical functionality, and Vita has it beat in terms of extra features that might appeal to the smartphone market. It has all of them beat in price (generally, unless you buy an older phone), but I'm not so sure that's what customers are looking at first and foremost these days.I let my 3 Year old use it all the time as a camera and he sometimes try to play games.
Let me ask this: would any of you 3DS owners give the system to a 7-year-old, or is it too fragile? There's no way in hell I would have given the PSP to a kid, but the DS was unbreakable.
...
Sony recently reported that PSN sales were up 14% in the months following the PSN hack (http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/news/a346897/playstation-network-revenue-up-14-percent-after-global-outage-reveals-sony.html) (and Sony's had a good retail software year).
If that's true that is unfortunate, because heaven knows they don't deserve it after the **** they pulled.
Sony recently reported that PSN sales were up 14% in the months following the PSN hack (http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/news/a346897/playstation-network-revenue-up-14-percent-after-global-outage-reveals-sony.html) (and Sony's had a good retail software year).
If that's true that is unfortunate, because heaven knows they don't deserve it after the **** they pulled.
It's going to be up 15% after I get done with it at Christmas. Of course, I'm using a disposable e-mail, and a prepaid credit card or PSN cards. Do I win?
The poor exchange rate is definitely the best explanation I've heard for Europe getting the games and NA not getting them.
Weren't the exchange rates worse for Europe than NA, though? And small profit from releasing niche games (and supporting what is left of your core audience) is better than no profit from releasing nothing.
The only explanations that I can see really being viable are:
(1) Nintendo doesn't count small successes, so the risk didn't outweigh the reduced profits
(2) NoA was too busy with other tasks... but since there hasn't been any other games to support and 3DS hasn't even received that big of a campaign, I can't imagine what has kept them so busy that they couldn't get small print runs of a couple games pushed out the door.
When you support the dark side everyone loses.
When you support the dark side everyone loses.
Nice to see that wanting to play the Persona games suddenly makes me part of the 1%.
"There is a very real chance they would lose money by releasing those games in North America,"
? No, they wouldn't. For one they don't have to spend any money on ads because the games are hardcore and those types of gamers already know what's coming. Two, the can print small builds and since this is an NINTENDO published game then they wouldn't have to pay the royalites like third party games. All the work is already finished.
If a third party like atlus can make profits will low sales and paying royalites I'm sure Nintendo could have.
Rough look at the money involved--it's basically $25 ish the publisher takes in out of an $50 game and this type of game would sell easily 100k in but lets use 50K instead. That's an million bucks for an game that's already BUILT. Yeah I can if it was localized but that's not the case at all.
Yeah, let's not kid ourselves: the Rainfall games would not be huge sellers on par with something like Mario Kart Wii, but they could probably sell 50,000 - 100,000 copies easily with minimal marketing (as if Nintendo of America knows how to do anything else for core-oriented titles). Assuming that Nintendo of America got a clue and kept the localizations as they were in Europe, costs could be kept to pretty much replication; distribution; and viral marketing. Unless we had the second coming of Demon's Souls, the titles wouldn't be mega-hits, but they'd probably do respectively and turn Nintendo a small profit. Nintendo doesn't get a pass on "not wanting to sell niche titles" when small companies like Atlus and Nippon-Ichi USA have turned that into an art form.
And at this point, is Nintendo really in a position to be picky about how it gets money after posting their first annual net loss since the 1980s?
The way to do it, though, would be to actually have Atlus do it. I'm sure they'd jump at the chance to publish these games, and it would eliminate all risk on Nintendo's part if they just let Atlus (or XSEED or whomever) buy the rights for them on the cheap.
Since the Euro is stronger then the dollar, games in Europe don't need to sell as much as they would in America in order to make profit, which would explain why NOE has had no problem releasing more games during this same time.Except that premise isn't true. The euro is not doing well either with respect to the yen, and it hasn't changed significantly against the dollar in the past year (they've both been up and down).
Maybe there should be some global currency thing so that no one would ever have to mess with exchange rates and all that crap.
This is all Unclebob's fault for not buying enough nintendo produce.When did Nintendo start producing Fruits and Vegetables? I know a lot of their games hint they go that way.
Ye shall be punished accordingly.
I ate so many bananas...
Wow, nice thread going here. All of this political talk without saying what really needs to be said:Stop Killing Kittens Lindy.
NINTENDO IZ TEH DOOMED
Yes, Caterkiller that was a real promotion and I believe that is not the first game they did that with.
Yes, Caterkiller that was a real promotion and I believe that is not the first game they did that with.
I thought they did that with an even earlier game. Now I need to find it. An article on these type of promotions be interesting. I wonder if a call to Chiquita would get an answer.Yes, Caterkiller that was a real promotion and I believe that is not the first game they did that with.
Yeah, they did it with Monkey Ball Step & Roll as well.
