Nintendo profits down 74% year on year
Net income of $603m for last 9 months, but predicts 15m first-month 3DS game sales
Nintendo has released financial results for the first nine months of its current financial year.
Net income was down 74.3 per cent to ¥49,557 million ($603 million) from last year's ¥192,601 ($2.3 billion).
The company claimed that this was "due to exchange losses totalling ¥84.4 billion primarily caused by reevaulation of assets in foreign currencies."
Revenues dropped 31.7 per cent, to ¥807,990 million ($9.8 billion) for the nine months ended December 31 2010, from ¥1,182,177 million ($14.4 billion) for the same period in 2009.
40.22 per cent of revenues derived from software, and 59.6 per cent from hardware. The Americas once again proved the primary territory, comprising 46.8 per cent of sales against Europe's 31.8 per cent and Japan's 16 per cent.
Nintendo observed that handheld software sales, especially Pokemon games, "continued to grow" and looked to Super Mario Galaxy 2, Wii Party, Donkey Kong Country Returns and New Super Mario Bros as Wii success stories over the last nine months.
"Holiday season sales were robust, especially in Europe and the United States, however sales did not reach last year's monthly record sales in the US in both DS and Wii hardware."
Worldwide sales of DS hardware were 15.7 million, and 13.72 million for Wii. Software sales for April to December 2010 were 98.9 million on DS and 150.5 million on Wii.
Projected hardware sales for the full financial year (ending March 31) have been lowered - the Wii by 1.5 million units to 16 million and DS by 1 million to 18.5 million units. However, when the latter is combined with projected 3DS hardware sales, Nintendo expects 22.5 million units by the end of March.
Forecasted 3DS hardware sales during its first month on sale are thus 4 million units.
Predicted software sales for the full 12 months are up - the Wii by 32 million units to 170 million, and DS by 10 million to 120 million. Again when combined with 3DS expectancies, the latter becomes 135 million - so 15 million 3DS games are expected to be sold during the handheld's first month (for most of which it will be solely available in Japan).
The 3DS launches in Japan on February 25, in Europe on March 25, and in the US on March 27.