TOKYO — Japanese game giant Nintendo on Thursday posted its first-ever annual loss since becoming a public company, blaming a soaring yen and price cutting on its consoles.
The Kyoto-based company said it lost 43.2 billion yen in the fiscal year through March, reversing a year-earlier profit of 77.62 billion yen, although the result was not as bad as the 65 billion yen loss it had forecast this year.
The firm went public in the early 1960s, according to its website.
Nintendo said sales dropped 36.2% from the previous year to 647.65 billion yen, adding that it “could not recover from a sales slump of Nintendo 3DS consoles in Europe and in the United States in the early fiscal year.”
For its current fiscal year, Nintendo forecast a return to profit, booking earnings of 20 billion yen on sales of 820 billion yen.
The company in August cut the price of its new Nintendo 3DS console from 25,000 yen to 15,000 yen in Japan, followed by similar reductions overseas as it struggled to boost sales going into the key Christmas season.
But the move failed to make up for the poor take-up seen earlier in the year, as the company battles tough competition from smartphones, tablet computers and social networking websites.
source: japantoday.com
