Nintendo posts $350 million loss, 3DS sales blamed

It seems that the 3DS isn’t doing all that well in the western markets as Nintendo has posted a big loss, and while the loss is down compared to last year, it’s still significant enough to make the company worry about the future.

It’s a known fact that the handled business for both Sony and Nintendo have been slowing down, especially for Sony, considering competition from the iOS market and mobile phones in general.

They lost $350 million for the six months of 2012, and expect to make a minor profit this year. They have revised the profit but not the net sales. They expect to ship 5.5 million Wii U units for this fiscal year.

There are 22.1 million 3DS units sold worldwide, which is up by 3 million, since they reported 19 million 3DS units sold last quarter. This is quite good but mostly comes from Japan where the handheld is selling extremely well.

They blame poor 3DS sales in the western markets where it isn’t selling as well as the DS did, or not matching the attach ratio in Japan.

“Affected by the appreciation of the yen and the above results, among other factors, net sales were 200.9 billion yen (of which overseas sales were 127.1 billion yen or 63.3% of the total sales). Due to factors such as the case that the “Wii U” hardware, which started to be manufactured in this September quarter, will have a negative impact on Nintendo’s profits, the operating loss was 29.1 billion yen,” Nintendo revealed.

“In addition, as a result of exchange losses totaling 23.2 billion yen.”

Nintendo also reports that there are more than 64.45 million 3DS games sold worldwide. Stay tuned for more information at GB.