Well, things had been beginning to look up for Nintendo over the past few months, but a recent financial briefing for the end of their financial year has shown this to be incorrect. While at the beginning of the year Nintendo had predicted profits of $1 billion and sales of 9 million of their new Wii U consoles, they ended the year with an operating loss of $240 million and only a mere 2.8 million Wii U's sold. Even Nintendo's 3DS division didn't sell as many as they had hoped, eliminating any hope of preventing a loss. This unfortunate news led directly to a heavy -17.04% hit on their stock value, completely erasing the recent gains they had made in stock prices.
There is a multitude of reasons behind Nintendo's recent struggles, ranging from facing new competition by Sony and Microsoft's recently released next-gen. consoles to Nintendo's consistently poor Wii U marketing. Ads for the Wii U rarely do a good job at selling their games to consumers, and even the Wii U's name itself has many consumers confusing it as a Wii peripheral to this day. Their lack of third party support and increasing reliance on first party games has made notable new releases relatively rare, and the fact that both PS4 and XBOX One are significantly more powerful undermine the Wii U's lower price.
I for one, as a long time fan of Nintendo, hope that Nintendo can figure out a way to turn the Wii U's ill-fortune around. It is incredibly important that they improve both their marketing and damaged relationships with third party developers. Beyond this, they really need to release a true system seller like Mario Kart or Super Smash Brothers, both of which are due sometime this year. If they can accomplish these tasks I believe that there is a good chance that they can bring themselves back to profitability.
Sources: http://www.gengame.net/2014/01/nintendo-projects-336-million-loss-for-fiscal-2013-stock-plummets-17/
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