Nintendo $925 Million Net Loss, Faith Placed In 3DS

It's time for Nintendo to announce another loss, and we weep for the falling giant, as this Thursday the gaming group reports a net loss of $925 million net loss for six months through September of this year. Nintendo reports that it's slashed its full year through March forecast to a $263 million net loss – though just this July they'd predicted an annual net profit of essentially that same size. Is this the mobile age of gaming coming to crush the group that essentially started the trend with the original GameBoy? Or is Nintendo just losing touch with the market that they've held strong for the vast majority of your humble narrator's lifetime?

I was just a lad when my uncle first brought my sister and I our first Nintendo Entertainment System, and it was then that we first learned that to make the game work, one simply had to blow on it. The same does not appear to be true for the greater Nintendo business as overall sales during this half-year period have fallen 41% to $2.8 billion, a half-year loss equalling two times as large a loss as the big red gaming group predicted in July. Comparatively the same period last year had Nintendo at a loss of right around $26 million.

It is on the Nintendo DS and the 3DS that the group places a lot of its hope for the future, even though the regular DS has had sales drop from 6.69 million units to 2.58 million units from the same unit of time last year to this half-year report. Software on the original DS also fell from 54.84 million units to 28.99 million units. The 3DS similarly hasn't been selling all that well, but after the price cut this year, the six-month report this week putting sales at 3.07 million units and 8.13 million units of software.

Then of course there's the Wii. This stationary console that works, as you know, with wireless controllers that detect their position relative to the console's reader, has had half-year sales at 3.35 million units compared to last year's same period sales at 4.97 million units. Software sales for the Wii also fell from 65.21 million units to 36.45 million units.

Time for a new device? Maybe a Wii U?