Earnings down 61% at Nintendo

With what appears to be a tough year ahead, Nintendo’s financial performance for the year just ended may worry investors.

The company’s earnings fell 60.6 per cent to under $150m for the year ending March 31st 2016. Revenue fell eight per cent to just over $4.5bn.

For the coming year Nintendo only expects sales to decline by about one per cent, and things operating income to grow by 37 per cent. That’s despite its very low Wii U sales estimates and a seemingly barren release schedule for both of its platforms.

3DS unit sales hit 6.79m units for the year, with software unit sales reaching 48.52m units. That’s down from 8.73m sales in the previous year. Lifetime 3DS sales have hit 58.9m units.

Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer was the year’s best selling game at 3.04m units.

Wii U hardware sales for the year reached 3.26m, down from 3.38m the previous year. Lifetime sales now stand at 12.8m units. Software sales were up, however, climbing from 24.4m to 27.4m.

The year’s best-selling Wii U title was Splatoon, with unit sales of 4.27m. Super Mario Maker sold 3.52m units.

All attention, then, shifts to its two new confirmed smartphone games – Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing. Nintendo had previously said it expects its smartphone business to quadruple profits.

We will aim to create a synergistic effect between the smart device business and Nintendo’s dedicated game system business to maximize the Nintendo businesses overall by growing our smart device business so that it is profitable on its own while continuously strengthening our connection with our consumers by enhancing features of our new membership service called My Nintendo,” the company added.

Furthermore, our endeavours will not be limited to video games. We are planning to offer new attractions at theme parks featuring Nintendo characters. We will also strive to further increase opportunities for consumers to come in contact with Nintendo characters in their daily lives, such as through visual content and merchandising in order to maximize the number of people who come in contact with Nintendo intellectual property.”