Nintendo will suffer a few days of rough headlines, as the company announced a quarterly loss of 17.23 billion yen ($220 million).

On the bright side? It’s less than Nintendo lost last year, and the 3DS is now apparently a profitable machine, as of today.

Nintendo has historically made money on each hardware unit sold, but with the drastic cost cutting actions taken last summer, Nintendo has been unable to rely on one of its financial constants.

The company sold 1.86 million 3DS units in the last quarter.

The next year will be extremely important to Nintendo, as the company moves toward the business of making money on the back of a profitable 3DS and the launch of the Wii U later this year.

Has it really been six years since the original Wii?

Nintendo will suffer a few days of rough headlines, as the company announced a quarterly loss of 17.23 billion yen ($220 million).

On the bright side? It’s less than Nintendo lost last year, and the 3DS is now apparently a profitable machine, as of today.

Nintendo has historically made money on each hardware unit sold, but with the drastic cost cutting actions taken last summer, Nintendo has been unable to rely on one of its financial constants.

The company sold 1.86 million 3DS units in the last quarter.

The next year will be extremely important to Nintendo, as the company moves toward the business of making money on the back of a profitable 3DS and the launch of the Wii U later this year.

Has it really been six years since the original Wii?

hey

EDIT: YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS I wasn't even trying either! :D on topic that's pretty bad, what could nitendo have possibly done with all their wii money...

Let's hope the 3DS keeps on selling then.

Proof read ya stuffs!

Kinda insane to think Someone like Nintendo are making a loss with how decent the 3ds has sold ect, its more difficult than i even imagine in that market.

Maybe they need to release more (good) games for the 3DS...but I'm no business person, so I don't know...

"It’s less than Nintendo lost year" Prolific.

I'm sure someone else can explain this but... if the 3DS is making money... what exactly are they losing money on? Just R&D for the Wii U? Advertising and trade shows and getting ready to roll it out? I can't imagine they're LOSING money on the Wii since it must cost 10 bucks to make.

I think you may have minced your words in the final line.

I really do hope Nintendo starts to do well, but I just can't see the WiiU being the hit they're hoping it to be.

wish Nintendo would go back to making games like super metroid. Then I would throw money at them, also the WII U doesn't seem to promising atm

@Patrick Klepek:

"On the bright side? It’s less than Nintendo lost year, and the 3DS is now apparently a profitable machine, as of today."

and

"Has it really been since years since the original Wii?"

I´m just glad the 3DS is getting games now. I´m in love with it. Can´t wait to see what Nintendo has in store for the next year.

@M_Shini said:

Proof read ya stuffs!

Kinda insane to think Someone like Nintendo are making a loss with how decent the 3ds has sold ect, its more difficult than i even imagine in that market.

You too, homie. It's etc., not ect.. Ec tetera? Come on, step it up.

What what.

Give Patrick a break. He's gone through some shit recently.

I said what what, in the butt.

@SamDrugbringer said:

I'm sure someone else can explain this but... if the 3DS is making money... what exactly are they losing money on? Just R&D for the Wii U? Advertising and trade shows and getting ready to roll it out? I can't imagine they're LOSING money on the Wii since it must cost 10 bucks to make.

That's like trying to explain how Nintendo has apparently already spent all of the money they made on the Wii. Sure I guess R&D for the 3DS and WiiU was probably fairly more expensive then regular R&D on a console with no fancy Nintendo gimmick. But still it just makes no sense. I guess they had a lot of coke parties or something.

C'mon guys, I feel like at least half of Patrick's articles have some kind of mistake in them. I actually don't really put the blame on Patrick as much as I do the other guys that need to proof read his stuff for him before it goes up. I understand it's really easy to have simple mistakes in your writing, it happens to me all the time, but whoever is proof reading these things needs to get on top of it.

The loss of interns hurts us all. 
 
On topic though, I bet Nintendo makes a ton of money off of the 3DS XL

@OllyOxenFree said:

What what.

I'm starting to think Patrick's lack of proofreading is some sort of intentional joke at this point.

In which case; well done Patrick.

Don't get me wrong though, Patrick's great.

who are all these people buying 3DS's? I would love to see numbers sold in america and japan. I can't see myself ever buying a portable game system ever again, my phone is good enough for that.

Are you drunk, Trick? Proofread your goddamn articles.

Giant Bomb should hire a copy editor.

@DoctorWelch said:

C'mon guys, I feel like at least half of Patrick's articles have some kind of mistake in them. I actually don't really put the blame on Patrick as much as I do the other guys that need to proof read his stuff for him before it goes up. I understand it's really easy to have simple mistakes in your writing, it happens to me all the time, but whoever is proof reading these things needs to get on top of it.

Why hire a proofreader when you can just put up a terrible article, read the comments, and fix it later? Seems to be the way nowadays.

Shitty companies deserve to fail and its sad indeed since I used to love Nintendo.

Patrick, it is poor form that you cannot be bothered to proofread a six sentence story. What does "Has it really been since years since the original Wii?" mean exactly?

@BoFooQ said:

who are all these people buying 3DS's? I would love to see numbers sold in america and japan. I can't see myself ever buying a portable game system ever again, my phone is good enough for that.

It surprised me also, I work in a game store and we sell like one every couple weeks.

who are all these people buying 3DS's? I would love to see numbers sold in america and japan. I can't see myself ever buying a portable game system ever again, my phone is good enough for that.

@embryo69 said:

Give Patrick a break. He's gone through some shit recently.

It's all good. :)

Nintendo is in some serious trouble. The massive investment they are going to make manufacturing the Wii U HAS to pay off, or they are going to have to make some big changes.

@BoFooQ said:

who are all these people buying 3DS's? I would love to see numbers sold in america and japan. I can't see myself ever buying a portable game system ever again, my phone is good enough for that.

Plenty of people because gaming on a real handheld is a superior experience to phones. I say this as a smartphone and iPad owner.

I'm curious to see how/if this will affect the price of the WiiU. Will they be willing to sell it at a loss in the beginning to move units. Or will they make sure they make money on each console to ensure they don't have a repeat of the 3DS issue.

I'm sure someone else can explain this but... if the 3DS is making money... what exactly are they losing money on? Just R&D for the Wii U? Advertising and trade shows and getting ready to roll it out? I can't imagine they're LOSING money on the Wii since it must cost 10 bucks to make.

@Turambar said:

@SamDrugbringer said:

I'm sure someone else can explain this but... if the 3DS is making money... what exactly are they losing money on? Just R&D for the Wii U? Advertising and trade shows and getting ready to roll it out? I can't imagine they're LOSING money on the Wii since it must cost 10 bucks to make.

well, the article makes no real mention of just how recently the 3ds started making money, so it might not have really figured much into the quarter. Also yeah, R&D as well as just the general upkeep for running the company is sure to eat into it a lot. While I'm sure they're making money per Wii sold, Wii's aren't exactly selling much anymore. NDP numbers for March had it selling at half as much as the 360 and PS3.

It's making money as of today. Says so in the article.

@Turambar said:

@SamDrugbringer said:

I'm sure someone else can explain this but... if the 3DS is making money... what exactly are they losing money on? Just R&D for the Wii U? Advertising and trade shows and getting ready to roll it out? I can't imagine they're LOSING money on the Wii since it must cost 10 bucks to make.

well, the article makes no real mention of just how recently the 3ds started making money, so it might not have really figured much into the quarter. Also yeah, R&D as well as just the general upkeep for running the company is sure to eat into it a lot. While I'm sure they're making money per Wii sold, Wii's aren't exactly selling much anymore. NDP numbers for March had it selling at half as much as the 360 and PS3.

It's making money as of today. Says so in the article.

Man, I'm not even a Nintendo Fan but I sure hope they'll do alright. Even though I personally don't "need" Nintendo, the industry certainly does I think.

Really hoping people get their hands on the Wii U and enjoy it as much as I did. Believe it or not, that tablet feels really great.

I hate to say it but I wonder if 3DS is profitable or not. In corporate bookkeeping you can move losses from one division of the company to another. In other words you take millions of yen in debt and just shift it off the 3DS books then declare there is no debt....no debt there at least.

I rather doubt 3DS is now profitable, but you would need a forensic search of Nintendo's books to know for sure.

Seem's like Nintendo's plan to get back to where they were is working, with the 3DS again being profitable, the 3DS XL coming out next month and the Wii U on the horizon. I

I really am interested though to find out exactly how much they must have spent on Wii U R&D.

It's hard to believe that Nintendo was losing money on the 3DS, but I guess that must have been due to the entirely unstandard display. I guess that's why they're downplaying 3D. Sucks because the 3DS is the one thing I've seen that's made me think that 3D could be a decent proposal for the future transition to the actual hologram.

@BoFooQ said:

who are all these people buying 3DS's? I would love to see numbers sold in america and japan. I can't see myself ever buying a portable game system ever again, my phone is good enough for that.

Although by all means I have no use for one cause of my phone, nor do I like portable systems at all, but I bought one cause... ugh I don't know, it's just weird to not buy the Nintendo console.

I can't imagine there are enough me's out there to make it profitable though so I do wonder who's buying it. Kids, I guess.

Man I wonder what will happen to Nintendo if the Wii-U Fails? I wonder how many times they can put out a mediocre console before they end up having to shut the console division down like Sega. Unlike Sonic however Mario will sell no matter what console its on so maybe one day that will happen. Imagine if you could just play Zelda with an Xbox or PS3.

So many writers in the room. Good to know everyone can spot the really obvious mistakes. Now go write a book all of you glorious little bastards!

@SamDrugbringer said:

I'm sure someone else can explain this but... if the 3DS is making money... what exactly are they losing money on? Just R&D for the Wii U? Advertising and trade shows and getting ready to roll it out? I can't imagine they're LOSING money on the Wii since it must cost 10 bucks to make.

Nintendo is a huge company. There are thousands of salaries to pay for employees, plus they have to pay the bills, electric bills, leases for their offices. And that's before you count all the money going into Wiiu manufactering, funding for game development and things like E3 and TGS. While Nintendo may be making money off of the 3DS, it's not enough to support a company the size of Nintendo. If the Wiiu isn't a smash success they're going to have to make some big changes to the company as a whole. That may not mean going third party, but it will, at the very least force the company to shrink and cut costs and scale down.

@RedRoach said:

@SamDrugbringer said:

I'm sure someone else can explain this but... if the 3DS is making money... what exactly are they losing money on? Just R&D for the Wii U? Advertising and trade shows and getting ready to roll it out? I can't imagine they're LOSING money on the Wii since it must cost 10 bucks to make.

Nintendo is a huge company. There are thousands of salaries to pay for employees, plus they have to pay the bills, electric bills, leases for their offices. And that's before you count all the money going into Wiiu manufactering, funding for game development and things like E3 and TGS. While Nintendo may be making money off of the 3DS, it's not enough to support a company the size of Nintendo. If the Wiiu isn't a smash success they're going to have to make some big changes to the company as a whole. That may not mean going third party, but it will, at the very least force the company to shrink and cut costs and scale down.

It seems to me like if they're so huge they're taking these kinds of losses between product cycles, they're going to have to scale down one way or another soon. But then, Microsoft and Sony take them too, they just cover them up with other divisions.

Might be a sign that the independent gaming company that makes it's own console IS ending, when I think of it like that.

I'm starting to think that Nintendo desperately needs to get things right with WiiU or they will start some kind of Atari or Sega decline.

@embryo69 said:

Give Patrick a break. He's gone through some shit recently.

That doesn't explain the typographical errors before that stuff. Could it be that either Patrick or the editor is dyslexic and does not know it.

@SamDrugbringer: Nintendo isn't an idependent company.

I really worry for Nintendo, I hope they're not staking their future on the wii-u because I just don't see it being a hit (in very short casuals will see it as an add on which they don't want because it makes things too complicated and hardcore don't want more current gen) and portable machines could be downwards slope because of 69p phone/pad games.

Also typos in Patrick's articles are getting annoying because half the comments are about them (i'm not critisising Patrick or the people who comment on them, I can't spell for toffee)