UPDATED: Final numbers put Yamauchi's total loss at something closer to $300 million. Still big!
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"We plan to show something new at next year’s E3, though typical gamers are not demanding high specs. The people who speak about the “next generation” are people who don’t know games."
"If the DS succeeds, we will rise to heaven, but if it fails we will sink to hell."
"Gamers don’t just want beautiful graphics, sounds and epic stories."
"We cannot guarantee interesting and fun games just by using better technology and increasing the functions of the machines."
I'm not sure how many of you remember former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, the hard ass who used run operations at Nintendo, and the man responsible for all of the above quotes, but he's having a bad day.
How come? Well, Bloomberg estimates Yamauchi, Nintendo's largest individual shareholder, lost more than $500 million.
Nintendo stock fell as much as 21% in response to Nintendo's first quarterly loss ever, a combined storm of plunging Wii sales and sluggish adoption of 3DS, resulting in Yamauchi's financial dip.
$500 million isn't a drop in the bucket for Yamauchi, but as a man thought to be worth roughly $4.6 billion, it's not the end of the world. Such a sharp drop represents lost confidence in Nintendo.
Nintendo's initial response has been to drop the price of 3DS from $249.99 to $169.99, starting August 12.
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