Nintendo Earnings Hammered As Wii Sales Fall By Half

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

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Nintendo had its worst quarter in a long time.  Sales of its aging Wii video console fell by over half to 2.23 million units for the last period. Profits also dropped by more than half to $447 million.

Ninetendo only has a few options to turn its fortunes around.

The company could cut the price of the Wii, but it is already the least expensive product in a market that includes the Sony (SNE) PS3 and Microsoft (MSFT) Xbox 360. The Japanese company is also reluctant to harm its margins.

Nintendo could work with game developers to create more attractive games for the platform, but developing games can take several quarters.

That leaves Nintendo to rely on its new Wii Resort Sports products, which is out in Japan but was  not the US or Europe in Q2. Resort Sports has the looks of a blockbuster. It allows the users to physically move with the action on the screen. The product is described as a “day at the beach” allowing players to doing most of the physical activities that they would do on a sunny day of vacation.

The Wii is getting old, so it has to rely on new features to keep its lead in the console. If Wii Resort Sports is not a huge hit, Nintendo will have let its two competitors back into the game.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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