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[Update]: Nintendo Losses Mount
[Update]: Nintendo has officially reported its fiscal results, and things are worse than originally speculated.
Yesterday there was a report from Nikkei that Nintendo would announce a group pre-tax loss of approximately 100 billion yen ($1.3 billion) for the half-year, but according to Nintendo, this figure actually turned out to be 107 billion yen.
Nintendo is forecasting a 20 billion yen loss for the full fiscal year that ends in March 2012, and which includes the upcoming holiday season – this is a marked swing from a July estimate of a 20 billion profit for the same time period. The company says that it's being hurt by an unfavorable exchange rate, but also by "weaker than expected hardware sales."
Although Nintendo says that the 3DS' price cut has improved sales of the system – which sold only 3.07 million units worldwide over the last six months – it admitted that the handheld "has yet to have many hit titles." This may change when Super Mario 3D Land comes out on November 13.
Some other worldwide numbers from Nintendo for the past six months (parenthetical figures are for the same period the previous year):
- 3DS software sales: 8.13 million
- DS handheld sales: 2.58 million (down from 6.69 million)
- DS software sales: 28.99 million (down from 54.84 million)
- Wii hardware sales: 3.35 million (down from 4.97 million)
- Wii software sales: 36.45 million (down from 65.21 million)
[Original Story]: Nintendo may be in more fiscal hot water than it originally anticipated, as the company is expected to reveal larger losses for the first half of the fiscal year ending in September.
Nikkei reports that Nintendo will "likely" report a group pre-tax loss of around 100 billion yen tomorrow. Nikkei says this is nearly twice the expected loss of 55 billion yen, and much more than last year's loss for the same time period this year, which was 4.1 billion yen.
The greater than expected loss is reportedly due to currency exchange losses of the yen versus the euro.
Nintendo will make its official midterm earnings report tomorrow, so we shall know what's what soon enough.
[via Andriasang]
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