Nintendo places big bet on Mario as Wii U sales slump

Nintendo posted an earnings loss due to slow device sale, as smart phones and tablets continue to chip away at the legacy gaming industry. Regardless, the company remains optimistic due to upcoming 'Mario Kart' and 'Super Smash Bros' releases.

|
Shizuo Kambayashi/FILE/AP
Shoppers walk under the logo of Nintendo and Super Mario characters at an electronics store in Tokyo Wednesday, May 7, 2014. Nintendo Co. sank to a loss for the fiscal year ended March as sales of its Wii U game machine continued to lag, but the Japanese manufacturer of Pokemon and Super Mario games promised Wednesday to return to profit this year.

Nintendo Co. sank to a loss for the fiscal year ended March as sales of its Wii U game machine continued to lag, but the Japanese manufacturer of Pokemon and Super Mario games promised Wednesday to return to profit this year.

Kyoto-based Nintendo reported a 23.2 billion yen ($229 million) loss, a reversal from a 7 billion yen profit eked out the previous year. Annual sales fell 10 percent to 571.7 billion yen ($5.6 billion). It did not break down quarterly numbers.

Wii U sales have fallen short of company forecasts. In January, Nintendo lowered its Wii U sales projection for the fiscal year through March from 9 million to less than a third of that at 2.8 million units.

Nintendo's actual results were even worse than the lowered projection at 2.72 million.

The company remained upbeat and said it expects to sell 3.6 million Wii U machines for the fiscal year through March 2015, helped by the planned release of popular games for the machine, such as "Mario Kart 8" and "Super Smash Bros."

Sales projections have been lowered repeatedly as people increasingly switch to smartphones and other devices to play games.

The Wii U has a touch-screen tablet controller called GamePad and a TV-watching feature called TVii.

Lowering the machine's price during the past fiscal year has been sufficient to revive sales.

Adding to its woes, Nintendo acknowledged that for the fiscal year ended March its relatively popular 3DS handheld also did not sell as well as it had expected.

The dismal results come despite a favorable exchange rate, which has in the past dramatically helped Nintendo earnings. The yen has been weakening, and that works as a plus for Japanese exporters.

Still, Nintendo forecast a return to profit for the fiscal year through March 2015, at 20 billion yen ($197 million), with sales expected to grow 3 percent to 590 billion yen ($5.8 billion).

Some analysts have been anticipating a change of strategy for Nintendo, urging it to start offering its games on smartphones, tablets and other devices, instead of focusing only on machines devoted to gaming. But the company has so far brushed off such advice.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Nintendo places big bet on Mario as Wii U sales slump
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0507/Nintendo-places-big-bet-on-Mario-as-Wii-U-sales-slump
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe