Today, Nintendo released their report detailing the company’s finances over the past six months, which were the first half of the fiscal year 2012. Nintendo Gal has gone through the report and pulled out the most interesting information.
-Total sales were 215.7 billion yen ($2.846 billion), down 40.6% from the same period last year. This has led to a large 70.27 billion yen ($927.2 million) loss for Nintendo. By the end of the year, Nintendo expects to have reduced their total loss to 20 billion yen ($263.9 million). Nintendo is currently worth 1.337 trillion yen ($17.64 billion).
-Half of the loss was due to a lack of strong titles, price drops on hardware systems, and a weakening U.S. dollar in terms of overseas. The other half of the loss came directly from the weakening of the U.S. dollar compared to the Japanese yen, as Nintendo has a lot of assets held in U.S. currency which are now less valuable. One dollar is currently worth 76.65 yen, down from 83.15 yen last year.
-Nintendo admitted its only notable title was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, which has sold over a million copies.
-Non-game merchandise, such as T-shirts, had sales of 648 million yen ($8.55 million).
-Of the three major markets, Europe had the greatest sales, making up 37.3% of sales. The Americas were a close second with 34.3% of sales, and Japan represented 20.8% of sales.
-Nintendo spent 26.01 billion yen ($343.2 million) on research and development, and 34.57 billion yen ($456.2 million) on advertising; both these numbers are nearly the same as last year. Nintendo noted 4.414 billion yen ($58.24 million) spent to battle “depreciation of property, plant and equipment” which is 67% higher than last year.
-Nintendo 3DS sales came to 2.36 million worldwide last quarter, much better than the 710,000 systems sold the previous quarter; 3.6 million software units were sold as well, a slight decline. Nintendo has sold 6.68 million 3DS systems since launch, and 17.56 million games. Nintendo still expects to sell 16 million 3DS units this year, but dropped their software forecast to 50 million games sold.
-Nintendo sold 2.58 million Nintendo DS units around the world over the past six months, with 149 million sold life-to-date. They expect to sell 6 million all year, a decreased expectation from the 9 million they previously projected. They also sold 28.99 million software units, with 868.48 million sold life-to-date, and expect to sell 62 million all year.
-The Wii is still Nintendo’s best-selling system for the past two quarters, with 3.35 million units sold. Nintendo still expects to sell 12 million this year, and has sold 89.36 million Wii systems life-to-date. For software, 36.45 million Wii games were sold this half-year, with 752.54 million sold life-to-date. Nintendo expects sales of 100 million games this year.
-Right now, the average 3DS owner has 2.63 games, compared to 5.83 games for DS owners and 8.42 games for Wii owners.
The full report can be read here.
I’m hoping that this loss has Nintendo treading a bit more cautiously in the future. The 3DS launch was a bit of a gaffe for them.
