Nintendo lower their expectation for the 3DS sales in a newly released, modified fiscal year financial forecast.
After monitoring the hardware and software sales for three quarters (and something) of the current fiscal year, which ends in March, Nintendo released a new financial forecast. In term of hardware sales, the Wii and Wii U are expected to perform as it was predicted in May (100 thousand and 3.4 million units respectively).
More importantly, the predicted sales of 3DS have dropped 13 percent (1 million units) to the current 6.6 million units. In the previous fiscal year (April 2014 – March 2015), Nintendo sold 8.7 million units of 3DS. That means there could now be 24 percent sales drop between fiscal years instead of previously predicted 13 percent.
Expectations of 3DS software (packaged and downloadable) sales have also been lowered. The current prediction states that they will be 47 million, which is 16 percent drop from the previous expectation of 56 million and could be 25 percent drop from the previous fiscal year result of 62.7 million.
Wii and Wii U software sales are now expected to go up 43 percent and 15 percent respectively. Weird.
Now let’s make clear what this means: sales of Nintendo 3DS are decreasing. Moreover, it’s happening at a faster rate than Nintendo expected. Actually, in consequence, the company’s annual profit will be 50 percent lower than it was predicted. Whether the reason are evil mobile games, weak yen or continous decline of the Japanese market, Nintendo can probably do nothing but put their hopes in their next console/handheld Nintendo NX, which we don’t know much about yet.
So, neither 3DS nor underperforming Wii U look like they can carry Nintendo on its shoulders. The question is: Will NX be able to do it?
What do you think about the future of Nintendo? What do you expect from NX? Let us know in the comments!
Source: Nintendo
Via: Ars Technica