Nintendo is continuing to haemorrhage money despite an increase in Nintendo 3DS hardware and software sales.
The Japanese gaming giant has released its first quarter financial results that ended June 30 2012. Though the number of Nintendo 3DS handheld consoles rose to 162 per cent compared to the same quarter a year before and the Nintendo 3DS software increased to 63 per cent, both the Nintendo Wii and original Nintendo DS failed to reach a million units sold in the same time frame as gamers instead are opting to wait for the new Wii U, or so Nintendo hopes.
According to the company, it sold just 540,000 Nintendo DS consoles and 1.86 million Nintendo 3DS consoles in the last 90 days. In comparison Apple sold three million iPod Touch devices in the same period. A number that it said was down on previous quarters.
If that wasn't enough of a woe for the Japanese games company, It managed to only sell 710,000 Nintendo Wii consoles, a number that puts it considerably behind Microsoft's Xbox 360 and the PS3.
So what now for Nintendo? The company has announced that from 25 July, they will no longer be selling Nintendo 3DS hardware below manufacturing costs. Don't fret the price isn't about to go up, just that the company has reduced its own manufacturing costs, but this is hardly likely to turn the company around.
Of course a lot will depend on the success of the Nintendo Wii U with the company promising a pre-Christmas arrival, however sceptics are already suggesting that the console will be the equivalent to Sega's Dreamcast, the console that eventually pushed the company out of the hardware business to focus on games and eventually apps for the iPhone and iPad.
Nintendo is a long way from that right now, but if the company's results continue to slide we might be in a situation where we see Mario on the iPhone or on Android sooner rather than later.
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