Reuters: "with [the] Wii boom waning, the successor being prepared by the creator of Super Mario looks like a losing proposition, as makers of smartphones and computer tablets take digital games to the bathroom, the commuter bus and back to the bedroom."

  • http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

    Kids love the DS but the current 3DS has problems. People worry about the dangers of the 3D effect, and the screen is still fairly small. Nintendo could work on the design. Keep the same basic form factor but  give it bigger screens. The kids would still buy them. My son just lined me up to take him to the shops tomorrow. I know he wants to buy a new game.

  • http://twitter.com/thedeadone Mark Cunningham

    This isn’t the full story though. It’s the first lost in *30* years! That’s impressive and it’s not nearly as bad as many predicted.

    Additionally Nintendo claim that the 3DS will be profitable by September and the 3DS has dominated the Japanese charts (but seems to have flopped elsewhere). They are finally coming into the 20th century now too seeing they just announced that New Super Mario Bros. 2 will be released for download.

    I wouldn’t write Nintendo off yet and I’d hate to see them go the way of Sega just because some people want Mario on their iPhones. I’d wait and see after E3 and their Wii U announcements.

  • Andy Pearce

    It’s time for the NintenPhone. Take my money already!

  • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

    Wow Nintendo didn’t lose money during the GameCube era? I must admit I’d just assumed that had lost them cash…

    Nintendo made a business decision to go with cheap hardware and focus on simplicity and a new era of games. That paid off really well for the early part of the Wii/360/PS3 cycle, but then as the price of the Microsoft and Sony systems came down, and they came up with some new innovations Wii’s momentum started running dry. Since then console gaming in general seems to have dissipated quite a bit.

    I’m sure a new gaming console cycle will kick everything off again. The Wii U looks like it could either be amazing or terrible. I’m hoping it’ll be the former.

    • http://BrianEaston.net/ Brian Easton

      The Wii really has nothing to do with this loss. Dropping the price of the 3DS last year is what put Nintendo in the red. For the first time they sold hardware at a loss, and the games that would take up the slack didn’t come out until late last year.

      • http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

         yeah 3ds sales have been wimpy and the handhelds are where Nintendo traditionally gets it’s money from.

        • http://BrianEaston.net/ Brian Easton

          The thing is the 3DS has sold faster than the DS did at this point in its lifetime. It just hasn’t sold as well as Nintendo had hoped when they dropped the price.

    • koko szanel

      Wii and Wii U will be fine as long as M$ keeps embarrassing itself by promoting “Kinect enabled Games” that use Kinect as a $200 microphone (Mass Effect 3 lol)

  • jtegnell

    Not really that fond of iPhone games. There are a couple that are okay, but finger touch screen controls are so inaccurate.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=48305720 Nathan Murray

    Maybe if there were any games at all released for Wii this year they might have sold some . . . I think it’s ridiculous that they’re surprised given that my Wii has been sitting unused on the shelf for five months because all that comes out are games like Big Game Hunter 7.

  • bingowings85

    I haven’t written Nintendo off yet but check out this graph
    http://www.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-mobile-deck-2012-3#-35Slide 35 is Angry Birds Downloads vs Nintendo DS Sales

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1065726537 Hollie Satterfield

    The fact that my Wii won’t play CDs or DVDs gives me the impression that Nintendo is a bunch of technophobes.  Never mind supporting technology that was invented this century.