14 DAY TRIAL // Nintendo has released financial results which show that it has lost 2 billion Yen, which is the equivalent of 24.7 million dollars, for the six months that have ended on September 2010, with annual profit for the hardware and video game maker projected to be down 60 percent to 1.1 billion dollars for the fiscal year which runs to the end of March 2011.
During the same six months of 2009 Nintendo has seen a profit of 69.5 billion Yen, which was roughly equal to 854.5 million dollars.
It is the first time in seven years that Nintendo posted a loss for six months and the company says that the main reasons are the relative strength of the Japanese currency, the drop in sales for both the Wii home console and the DS handheld and the fact that the new 3DS device has been confirmed as coming out in late February 2011.
Gamers who might have picked up a new Nintendo handheld are now determined to wait for the new hardware, which allows 3D gaming experiences without the use of special glasses, which means that in the last six months the DS line up only sold only 6.69 million units, compared with 11.7 during the same period last year.
The Wii also saw a drop, although not as steep, going from 5.75 million consoles sold to 4.97.
Nintendo has long been the front runner in terms of sales for the current console generation, at times moving more units than the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft combined.
Now the two rivals have cut the price of their devices and are also moving into the motion tracking market with Move and Kinect, meaning that Nintendo is losing some of its competitive advantages.
Analysts are widely expecting Nintendo to announce and release a new version of the Wii, with High Definition capabilities.