14 DAY TRIAL // A nine-month revenue of $17.1 billion is a big number even for corporate giant Nintendo. Not only that, but the company even expected another big holiday season with figures to further increase its revenues. But as time progressed, their expectations weren't met and by July sales fell by 40 percent and profits by 60. Now, Bloomberg expects Nintendo to revisit their predictions regarding total income, but to also announce their first profit decline since 2004 when they launched the DS platform.
Bloomberg put together the predictions of ten analysts and the average result was that Nintendo's net income would fall by 11 percent, down to ¥249.3 billion, or $2.5 billion. These numbers are expected to materialize by the end of the fiscal year, the end of March 2010. In Satoru Kikuchi’s opinion, Nintendo's regress is caused by "sluggish sales in the first half [of the year], the price cut for the Wii and currency-related impact. Nintendo may cut its profit projection about 30 percent." The Deutsche Bank AG Tokyo analyst is just one of the people Bloomberg relied on when it reached its final conclusion.
These numbers follow the latest report from NPD, which showed that the Wii and the PlayStation 3 took advantage of the US price cuts and increased their sales. On September 27 the Wii brought its price down to $200 and Sony introduced their new PlayStation 3 Slim in late August for $300. With this, the PS3 managed to become the number one sold console in the US in September, but still didn't manage to outperform the DS.
With 491,000 units sold the PS3 could not catch up to the 524,200 units the handheld console did, but outranked the Wii. Even with the 462,000 consoles sold, and a 67 percent boost in total sales since August, Nintendo couldn't live up to Sony's performance. As sheer numbers go, last in the race came the Xbox 360, and even though Microsoft dropped the price of the Elite to $300 it still managed to sell just 352,600 units. Maybe all those storage unit controversies are at fault.