Nintendo Wii U to be sold at a loss, 3DS starts to turn a profit

Nintendo Wii U to be sold at a loss, 3DS starts to turn a profit

Mario’s alma mater may be looking at its next big console to bolster its stumbling net income, but it won’t be raising its bottom line on hardware alone: Nintendo says the Wii U is going to be sold at a loss. While this is par for the course for most game consoles, loss leader products are somewhat of a new trend for Nintendo, which only started selling hardware at a loss recently. On the upside, company CEO Satoru Iwata says the 3DS is back in the black, finally selling for a tidy (though unspecified) profit after dropping its price late last year. Nintendo expects business to pick up down the road, but says circumstances will keep it from attaining “Nintendo-like” profits in this fiscal year.

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Nintendo Wii U to be sold at a loss, 3DS starts to turn a profit originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nintendo will sell Wii U under cost

When the Wii U launches on November 18, Nintendo will sell the new console starting at $299, which isn’t a bad price at all for a new console, especially something as promising as the Wii U. However, Nintendo confirmed that it will be selling it under cost, meaning that the company will take a loss for each console they sell.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata confirmed the news to investors yesterday after the company’s latest financial briefing. Iwata said that “the Wii U hardware will have a negative impact on Nintendo’s profits early after the launch.” He said that instead of “determining a price based on its manufacturing cost, [they] selected one that consumers would consider to be reasonable.”

This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, though. For Sony, it actually wasn’t until a few years after the PlayStation 3 launch when the company finally started seeing a profit on its hardware sales, and the same goes for Microsoft with its Xbox 360. However, Nintendo has always been about making a profit on its gaming hardware.

With the Wii U being sold under cost, Iwata says that the company may not achieve “Nintendo-like” profits within their fiscal year, but he expects financial performance to at least be “revitalized.” The Wii U goes on sale November 23 starting at $299, and early adopters will have 23 games to choose from right on launch day.

[via Eurogamer]


Nintendo will sell Wii U under cost is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Holiday Wii bundles pair Just Dance 4 or Skylanders Giants from $130

Nintendo has revealed a pair of new Wii bundles in the hope of slowing the dwindling sales of the console, promising a choice of titles and pricing from $129.99. The first bundle pairs the white Wii, a matching Wii controller, and a Nunchuck, with Just Dance 4, and will go on sale from November 4 in the US. If you’re not into dancing, however, never fear: there’s a second, even more feature-backed bundle to choose.

$149.99 gets you a blue Wii – again, with a matching Wiimote and Nunchuck – as well as Activision’s Skylanders Giants. You also get a Portal of Power, two Skylanders characters, and an exclusive Giant Skylander, pairing a console game with traditional physical toys.

Despite Nintendo’s best efforts, sales of the Wii continue to fall. In the company’s latest financial results, announced earlier today, the console was a black mark in comparison to the 3DS, which saw rising sales figures as a result of the larger 3DS XL version.

On the horizon, meanwhile, is the Wii U. That will go on sale in the US on November 18, alongside rather than replacing the Wii, which will stick around as a budget option; both of these bundles cost at most half of the price of the entry-level Wii U package.


Holiday Wii bundles pair Just Dance 4 or Skylanders Giants from $130 is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Nintendo trims losses as sales continue dive: slashes forecast by 70%

Nintendo continues to see gaming hardware sales fall, but the company has trimmed losses and is pegging its hopes on Wii U as it slashes financial predictions. Numbers for the first half of 2012 confirm another drop in net sales, down to 200,994 million yen ($2.52bn) in the period of April to September 2012, with net losses of 27,996 million yen ($351m). Nintendo 3DS sales rose, up to 5.06m units, primarily thanks to the new 3DS XL, but Wii sales dived to 1.32m units.

Nonetheless, while it was a six month period of losses, those losses weren’t quite as dramatic as in previous years. Net loss was roughly half of what Nintendo suffered a year ago, while operating income – although still a loss of 29,159 million yen ($365m) – was still better than the 57,346 million yen loss in 2011.

Still to come is the Wii U, though Nintendo does point out that production costs for the console – which entered mass production in September – will have an impact on profits too. The company now expects to make just 6,000 million yen ($75m) in net income for the full fiscal year ending March 31 2013, rather than 20,000 million yen, based on a fall in predicted operating income and ordinary income.

The Wii U will go on sale in the US on November 18, priced from $299.99. The console features a new, tablet-style GamePad controller and smart TV functionality.


Nintendo trims losses as sales continue dive: slashes forecast by 70% is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Nintendo reports continued first-half losses for 2012, is waiting on the Wii U

Nintendo reports continued first-half losses for 2012, is waiting on the Wii U

Nintendo’s reported its financial results for the first of half of the year, and things are still a little rocky. Net sales in the last six months have decreased 6.8 percent compared to the same point last year, while net income continues to drop, this time by 27,996 million yen. As of September 2012, Nintendo has now sold over 22 million 3DS units (three million more since last quarter), while the Wii remains just shy of the 100 million milestone, settling at 97.2 million units sold. Nintendo looks to be in a similar position to last year, with customers still waiting for the company’s next big console to appear — and the gamesmaker hoping they will. Laying blame at the strong yen, the company has dramatically cut its forecast for the rest of the year, down from 20 billion ($250 million) to 6 billion yen ($75 million), pinning its hopes on 3DS sales ahead of the Wii U’s global launch later this year.

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Nintendo reports continued first-half losses for 2012, is waiting on the Wii U originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Oct 2012 03:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Characters Play Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Sony vs. Nintendo

If you’ve seen media of Sony’s upcoming fighting game PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, then you know that it’s quite similar to Nintendo’s Smash. Bros. series. The biggest difference is most likely with their rosters, which are each filled with company exclusives. But a group of Wii modders managed to enjoy the best of both worlds.

playstation all stars battle royale super smash bros brawl mod

Members of the Smash Bros. mod site Brawl Vault recreated the characters that will be available in Sony’s game so they can play with them on Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Now they can have Nathan Drake, Sackboy and Sly Cooper go up against Mario, Link, Pikachu. But that’s not all. They also made characters that are not in the current revealed roster of Sony’s brawler, including Commander Shepard, Isaac Clarke and Tomba. Below is a gameplay video uploaded by YouTuber sulleh1:

Here’s the second part of the video:

Unfortunately I don’t know enough about Smash Bros. so I don’t know if these are just character skins or if they have unique moves as well. In any case, you can download these characters for free. You’ll have to mod an ISO of Super Smash Bros. Brawl to get these characters into the game though. I suggest you head to Brawl Vault not just for the character files but for instructions as well.

[via Destructoid]

 


Nintendo counterfeiter likely on the way to jail after making $1m in sales

Today, we’re finding once again out that crime doesn’t pay – or at least it does for a little while until you get busted. One Nintendo counterfeiter, named James Success Brooks, is more than likely facing time in the slammer after Nintendo discovered he was selling counterfeit Wii and DS games online. According to Croydon Guardian, Brooks sold these games online between 2009 and 2011, raking in around £600,000 ($960,120) in the process.


That definitely isn’t chump change, so it’s no wonder that Nintendo went after him. Brooks found himself on the wrong end of an investigation carried out by the big N and the United Kingdom Interactive Entertainment Association after it came to Nintendo’s attention that an online retailer was selling unauthorized Nintendo goods. The two began buying these bogus products from various online retailers, and their investigation eventually brought them back to the mastermind behind the whole operation: Brooks.

According to Croydon Guardian, Brooks was charged “two counts of fraudulent trading, two counts of supplying an article to use in fraud, two counts of unauthorised possession of goods bearing a trademark and one count of unauthorised use of a trademark,” and appeared in court last Friday to plead guilty to all of the charges brought against him. He’s currently out on bail at the moment, but he’ll be back in court soon enough – he’s scheduled to go back in front of judge on Friday, November 9 to receive sentencing.

Don’t expect the court to just let him off with a slap on the wrist either. As we said, making nearly $1 million from the sale of bogus products isn’t anything to scoff at, so it’s almost certain that he’ll be thrown in jail. This shows that Nintendo is obviously taking this anti-piracy thing seriously, so it may not be the best idea to hit up those Super Mario Galaxy torrents you’ve been eyeing.


Nintendo counterfeiter likely on the way to jail after making $1m in sales is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Nintendo Wii U GamePad delay only 1/60 of a second

Because of the high-definition graphics of the Wii U and the 854×480 resolution of the Wii U GamePad’s screen, a lot of people have been guessing that the lag time would be incredibly high. However, Ubisoft’s Rayman Legends developer Michel Ancel has confirmed that the GamePad’s screen only has a delay of 1/60 of a second.

This means that the Wii U GamePad receives the image on its screen one frame later than the TV receives its image. This may seem like a huge deal and would put some players at a disadvantage, but one frame is obviously only a split second and most gamers won’t be able to tell the difference. The human eye usually can’t detect anything over 60 frames per second anyway.

Ancel also called the Wii U GamePad “quite a bit more advanced than people think.” He mentioned that the technology used is quite impressive, and other console makers like Microsoft and Sony would have to work fairly hard to get to this level of responsiveness out of a controller. Whether that’s true or not, we’ll have to wait and see what these companies come up with.

Nintendo‘s Wii U is officially launching on November 18, and early adopters will have 23 games to choose from right on launch day, including Call of Duty: Black Ops II, New Super Mario Bros., and Transformers Prime. Pricing for the console will start at $299 for the Basic bundle and $349 for the Deluxe set.

[via Ars Technica]


Nintendo Wii U GamePad delay only 1/60 of a second is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Nintendo Wii sees price slash to $129.99

We know that the Nintendo Wii U is expected to be launched soon, but at the same time despite it being relatively affordable, there are still those out there who cannot afford or who are unwilling to fork out that money. Well if you don’t think that it’s necessary to get the latest Nintendo console, you might be interested to learn that the Wii has its price slashed from a very affordable $149.99 to an even more affordable $129.99. Even better the $129.99 version is a bundle that will come bundled with Wii Sports Resort in addition to Wii Sports. It also includes a black Wii console, a black WiiMote Plus, a black Nunchuk and is expected to be up for sale come 28th of October. So if you think that the Wii still has a ton of gaming life left in it and you don’t really see the need for a Wii U, $129.99 for the bundle does seem like a pretty good deal. Any takers?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Nintendo: Wii U will not see pricing at E3, Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly for the Wii gets detailed, website and trailer launched,

Nintendo To Drop Price Of Wii To $129 For Holiday Season

NINTENDO_LOGO

Nintendo has dropped the price of the Wii console to $129.99. Of course, this is to keep pace with holiday demand and maintain an edge in a market that’s turned more difficult for the gaming company.

The value package includes a black console with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort on a single disc, along with a black Wii remote and Nunchuk controller. This replaces the current $149 version that includes New Super Mario Bros.

The lower-cost Wii will be available widely starting October 28, at all the same places you’d normally buy a Wii, like Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, Gamestop, etc.

As opposed to more hard core consoles, the Wii reaches out to consumers as more of a family toy. With that in mind, it makes sense for Nintendo to go after the holiday shopping crowd.

In related news, the Wii U will hit shelves on November 18 for a much pricier $299.99.

Nintendo has struggled of late to be the powerhouse it once was. The company’s finances are on a steady trip downhill, with operating losses of $462 million as of April.