{"id":61508,"date":"2014-01-20T10:48:37","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T08:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=61508"},"modified":"2014-01-20T10:55:22","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T08:55:22","slug":"nintendo-forecasts-big-loss-wii-u-doomed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/61508-nintendo-forecasts-big-loss-wii-u-doomed","title":{"rendered":"Nintendo forecasts big loss, Wii U doomed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the financial year ending March 2014, Nintendo has cut its sales forecast of the Wii U console from 9 million to 2.8 million units.<\/p>\n

This is even less than the 3.45 million units forecast for the March 2013 financial year. Wii U Game sale projections are down to 19 million from 38 million units.<\/p>\n

The company also predicts a big financial loss of US$240 million (\u00b1R2.6 billion) for the year.<\/p>\n

This changes their forecast from Yen100 million profit to a Yen35 million loss.<\/p>\n

3DS sales were cut to 13.5 million from 18 million units. 3DS games sales are down to 66 million from 80 million units.<\/p>\n

The bad news caused Nintendo’s share price to plummet to the lowest point since 2001.<\/p>\n

Launched in November 2012, the Wii U has failed to capture the minds and wallets of gamers as did the wildly popular Wii predecessor.<\/p>\n

This is a sad state of affairs for Nintendo, compared to the over 2 million units sold in launch month boasted by both Sony and Microsoft for their PS4 and Xbox One.<\/p>\n

Armchair commentators and industry analysts alike have run the gamut of reasons for this, among them: high price; underpowered hardware; lack of console selling games; poor consumer awareness on the product’s features; and simply bad timing as core gamers awaited the transition to powerful next-gen consoles.<\/p>\n

Nintendo still has room to manoeuvre though, as they sit on a cash-cushion of R88 billion which can be used to formulate an implement a new strategy.<\/p>\n

\"Satoru<\/a>

Satoru Iwata<\/p><\/div>\n

Nintendo going mobile?<\/h3>\n

Speaking at a press briefing, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said the company is looking at a new business model.<\/p>\n

“We are thinking about a new business structure. Given the expansion of smart devices, we are naturally studying how smart devices can be used to grow the game-player business. It’s not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone,” said Iwata.<\/p>\n

According to Reuters<\/a>, Iwata apologised to shareholders for the bad performance, but said there will be no management shake-up in the short term and he does not intend to step down.<\/p>\n

Source: Bloomberg<\/a><\/h6>\n

More gaming news<\/h3>\n

SA game dev stats \u2013 local industry gaining strength<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Fable Trilogy revealed, launch date announced<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

BioShock movie concept art is gorgeous<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Team Fortress 2 stats highlight success of free-to-play model<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wii U has landed Nintendo in trouble. The company’s president hints at a new mobile gaming strategy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":157,"featured_media":56896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[21,73,3787,1399],"class_list":["post-61508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline","tag-nintendo","tag-satoru-iwata","tag-wii-u"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61509,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61508\/revisions\/61509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}