For the first time ever, Nintendo has ended a financial year in the red, posting an annual net loss of $531.1 million and a sales drop of 36.2 percent over the previous year. That’s a lot of copies of Jenga for Wii that nobody bought.
The low sales of the 3DS were partly to blame, with the hand-held selling only 13.53 million units around the world – a lot of numbers by any other standard, but not very many by Nintendo’s standard. The company had expected to sell 16 million units in that period.
“They have been beaten by smartphones and tablets, in particular, for consumers spending and, more importantly, time,” said David Gibson, an analyst for Macquarie in Tokyo.
Nintendo will be looking to change this with the launch of the Wii U later this year, but analysts say they’ll have to sell the new console at $350 to break even – that’s $100 more than the Wii’s launch price, and at least $50 more than an Xbox or PS3.
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