Quake and Tsunami Cost Japanese Games Industry More than 88 Million Dollars

Japanese magazine publisher Enterbrain, which also tracks the evolution of the country's video game development industry, says that estimates show that the combination of earthquake and tsunami that the nations suffered on March 11 might have cost the business segment no less than 88 million dollars.

The magazine Famitsu says that Hirokazu Hamamura, who is the chief executive officer of Enterbrain, has advanced the figure at a seminar in Tokyo, saying that 2.86 billion Yen, which is the equivalent of 34.6 million dollars, were linked to lost sales in the hardware space and that another 4.47 billion Yen, about 54.2 million dollars, have resulted from losses linked to software sales.

The biggest issue faced by both developers and publishers in Japan are delays linked to the March disaster, which affected a lot of games and even big launches like Steel Diver from Nintendo and franchises like Dead or Alive and Yakuza.

The CEO also believes that the quake had a negative impact on the progress of the Nintendo 3DS, the newly introduced three-dimensions capable handheld, which managed to sell 746,000 units in its first month on store shelves.

Hirokazu Hamamura says Nintendo was preparing a big marketing push for its new platform which was delayed because of the quake.

Recently, the Nintendo 3DS has been overtaken in terms of sales in Japan by the older PlayStation Portable device from Sony.

The leader of Enterbrain believes that the losses are important but that the Japanese video game industry can quickly recover, because delays will mean more sales for companies in the coming months and because the Nintendo 3DS continues to perform well outside of Japan, with Nintendo able to keep stores supplied even through the disaster.

The quake and tsunami double punch might lead to delays in the expected announcement about the successor for the Nintendo Wii gaming console, which is expected in the first half of this year.