The Possible Downfall of Nintendo?
By J-Dub
Could Nintendo be heading down a slippery slope that Mario can’t even save them from? Nintendo recently announced some staggering news earlier this week. Their shares have fallen 20%. This has been their lowest since May 2004. Also, Nintendo has taken a huge net loss for the first quarter by 25.5 billion yen ($324 million). That came after Nintendo had released their new fiscal year profit forecast and most likely did not like to see an 82% decrease. Original forecasts had the fiscal year of 2011-2012 to be in the area of 110 billion yen ($1.4 billion). More recent forecasts have them at 20 billion yen ($254.6 million). What will the video game juggernaut do to fix this?
Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata, is going to great lengths to attempt and stop the hemorrhaging. At the Nintendo Shareholders meeting on July 28th he announced the he would be taking a 50% cut to his personal salary. Other higher level executives will be taking a 30% cut and others will take a 20% cut. Could their misfortunes benefit you? Simply enough, Yes it does! Iwata also announced a large price cut to their handheld, the 3DS. Come August 12th the 3DS will go from $249.99 to $169.99! Now Nintendo is taking a loss on every 3DS sold after the price cut. Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America President, had this to say about the price cut, “For anyone who was on the fence about buying a Nintendo 3DS, this is a huge motivation to buy now. We are giving shoppers every incentive to pick up a Nintendo 3DS, from an amazing new price to a rapid-fire succession of great games.”
Now, Nintendo is giving back to 3DS fans. If you already own a 3DS and have wireless internet you are eligible for 20 FREE games. All you have to do is connect to Nintendo eShop before August 11, 11:59 p.m. and you will automatically be registered in the Nintendo 3DS “Ambassador Program”. The first ten games are off the NES and are available September 1st. All ten games have not yet been announced but the examples are Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Jr., Balloon Fight, Ice Climber and “The Legend of Zelda. The last ten games are off the Gameboy Advance and are available by the end of 2011. Like the NES games, all ten games have not been announced but the examples are Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ and Mario vs. Donkey Kong. The NES games will be made available to the public after the ambassador members, but Nintendo has no plans on releasing the Gameboy Advanced games to the public. Nintendo is in some trouble but hopefully they can find a way to recover. Nintendo has isolated a lot of its target market to casual gamers which does not to appear to be working for them. They need to find a way to bring core gamers back. It’s going to be an uphill battle going against Microsoft and Sony on the console front and facing off against the Playstation Vita soon for handheld supremacy. Nintendo needs to find a way to come through all this or they will go the way of Sega and crash and burn.
Read what Alejandro Gustafar had to say HERE