Gaming giant Nintendo reported their first ever major drop in quarterly profit this morning, and expects an even larger full-year loss to come. The decrease is mainly due to Nintendo’s increasing struggle to remain relevant as mobile devices like the iPhone continue to take gaming by storm.
Reuters reports:
Nintendo Co Ltd posted a sharp drop in quarterly profit and forecast a bigger-than-expected full-year loss, its first at an operating level, as it battles a strong yen and its games devices lose ground to gadgets such as Apple’s iPhone.
The creator of the Super Mario franchise dominated the video games industry for years with its DS handheld players and Wii home consoles, but is now struggling to keep up as more versatile smartphone and tablet sales boom.
The company now expects an annual operating loss of a massive $575 million, marking an end to the growth of console gaming, and the beginning of the end of console gaming as we know it.
Nintendo now expects an annual operating loss of 45 billion yen ($575 million), dwarfing expectations of a 4.2 billion yen loss, based on the average of 21 analyst forecasts.
It’s hardly surprising, however. While Nintendo does have plenty of unique titles to keep consumers’ interest, there are likeqise a large number of unique and high quality games available on iOS and Android, and considering that console games can cost $40-60, compared to an average well below $10 on mobile platforms (on devices that many people would own anyway), it appears that people are voting with their wallets.
If only Nintendo would face the music and start making Nintendo’s great games available on iOS and Android instead of focusing on their own proprietary hardware, maybe they could turn things around.
Round one goes to mobile devices. Your move, Nintendo.
