Nintendo Announces a Darker Financial Forecast as Wii-U Appears on the Horizon

Japanese gaming behemoth Nintendo has reported a gigantic financial loss of 48.4 billion yen for the last three quarters of 2011 making this their first annual loss in 30 years.

PCMag has furnished an article about Nintendo’s Thursday announcement that they took a loss of almost $627.9 million for the nine-month period that ended in December. This is almost exactly as much as Nintendo earned during their 2010 fiscal year when they made a profit of $638.83 million. Making this year an almost a total reversal. Much of this is reflected in a 5% slump in Nintendo’s stock in September 2011.

Nintendo spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa said, “Sales of the 3DS were strong in Japan, but Christmas shopping got to a late start overall in the US and Europe. But we are upbeat about hardware and software sales for next fiscal year.”

The Nintendo 3DS did see a great deal of popularity in Japan but it took a while to reach the US and there it didn’t do as well, although it did shine through late-year sales slump for the gaming company. In July, Nintendo reduced the price on the 3DS from $249.99 to $169.99 hoping to turn sales around. The holiday season still didn’t bring in the cash with the reduced price and Nintendo had to refigure its sales expectations from 16 million to 14 million.

Although worldwide sales of the Nintendo 3DS did hit 11.43 million over the nine months, the gaming company said—in the US sales of the 3DS only just crossed the 4 million unit mark last month. Games for the platform such as Super Mario 3D Land, however, did not do so well.

This has been a rough year, but also one with a great deal of expectation about the upcoming Wii-U. Nintendo debuted this new device at E3 2011 but did not give a clear indication as to when they expected to bring it to market except that it might appear during the latter half of 2012. Just like its predecessor, the Wii, the Wii-U is a strange innovation on how video games are presented to players by including a touch-screen controller that’s handled like a tablet and interacts with the television visually.

The Associated Press is now reporting that Nintendo has revealed that it will have the Wii-U ready in time for the winter holiday season (also the biggest sales season for all retail and especially video games.) Nintendo has yet to announce prices for the new system.