14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher and hardware developer Nintendo has reported its first ever annual loss for the year that ended on March 31, saying that it has lost 43.2 billion Yen, about 531.1 million dollars (402.8 million Euro) while overall sales came in at 647 billion Yen, around 8 billion dollars (6.06 billion Euro).
This figure is 36.2 percent lower than that posted for the previous fiscal year and the losses were smaller than analysts predicted, mostly because the company has managed to sell more Nintendo 3DS handhelds than it was expecting.
For the 2012 fiscal year, 13.53 million units of the new handheld were sold all over the world, with 36 million copies of games for the platform also delivered to players.
Lifetime sales for the 3DS have reached 17.13 million units.
The older DS devices, including the Lite, the DSi and the XL, managed to add another 5.1 million units to the handheld bottom line for Nintendo, with the overall line surpassing the 900 million copies when it comes to titles sold.
The Nintendo 3DS hit a precipitous drop in sales soon after launch and the company needed to cut its price significantly to make it an attractive proposition again, which contributed to the losses.
By the middle of the current fiscal year, Nintendo plans to make a profit on each unit of the 3DS sold and to add a number of high-profile titles to the line-up in the coming months: New Super Mario Bros 2 in August, Animal Crossing this fall and Brain Age 3DS this summer, at the moment only in Japan.
This year the company will also see a boost from the launch of the Nintendo Wii U home console, which is expected in Japan, the United States, Europe and Australia before the end of the year.