It’s something that no one expected after the amount of money they lost on the 3DS after the price drop. We expected Nintendo to plan properly for the Wii U and make a profit from the gate as they’ve historically known to do as a company, but they have confirmed that they will be taking a loss on the Wii U.
Now before you go “What’s in the system, etc. etc.”, remember that the PS3 costs $250 and is a 6-year-old console, so when the Wii U is signficiantly upgraded and contains a unique gamepad–it’s unrealistic to expected Nintendo to be making a profit at $300.
You can check out Nintendo’s official statement on the matter below.
“During the second quarter of this fiscal term, we have successfully eliminated the situation that we sell the Nintendo 3DS hardware below cost, which was the main reason our corporate profits fell in the last term,” they said.
“However, as we are in the phase of concentrating our development resources on software for the Nintendo 3DS system, which is still in an earlier stage of penetration than that of Nintendo DS, and as we have not yet launched the Wii U system, it is difficult to increase the total sales of software, which is generally profitable. In addition to the yen’s continuous appreciation, the Wii U hardware will have a negative impact on Nintendo’s profits early after the launch because rather than determining a price based on its manufacturing cost, we selected one that consumers would consider to be reasonable.
“In this first half of the term before the launch of the Wii U, we were not able to make a profit on software for the system while we had to book a loss on the hardware, which is currently in production and will be sold below cost. Our loss has therefore widened during the second quarter in spite of bringing the Nintendo 3DS hardware back to profitability.
“Although we expect our financial performance to be revitalized, under these circumstances, unfortunately we cannot say that we will achieve “Nintendo-like” profits within this fiscal year.”
Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
