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Nintendo Posts Yet Another Loss, Despite Mario Kart 8

Posted by Unknown on from the mario-goes-back-to-plumbing dept.

redletterdave (2493036) writes Nintendo posted its third loss in four quarters on Wednesday. Even though Mario Kart 8, its big first-party game released in May, shipped more than 2.82 million copies by the end of June, the Mario-themed racing game was not enough to help Nintendo's struggling Wii U console perform in this particular quarter. The company said it lost $97 million between March and June. Nintendo shipped 510,000 units of the Wii U in the June quarter, bringing the total to 6.68 million consoles sold — it's a big jump from the 160,000 units it sold in the same quarter a year ago and a small improvement over the 310,000 units it sold in the March quarter. Still, the Wii U is still lagging behind the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, and Nintendo must also contend with mobile games available on Apple and Google's app stores, which cost but a fraction of a Nintendo game.

8 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Here's an idea! by EzInKy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Open up your platform so that anybody who wishes to can program for it, that way you aren't dependent on just a few titles.

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    1. Re:Here's an idea! by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You mean nintendo's price-fixing and marketing gimmick?

      --
      A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
    2. Re:Here's an idea! by blackraven14250 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's 1983. Atari just settled a lawsuit over Activision's ability to create games for the 2600, and did not get a restraining order against the practice. Shovelware is running rampant, and many of the companies creating the shovelware are small startups. Games are not selling because they were overall fucking terrible. Stores lose a ton of money on having merchandise they couldn't sell. Many of both the distributors and developers are going of business. The distributors that are diversified and survive, like Toys 'R Us, refuse to use inventory space on games. It's a business decision they're making based on what happens when games are completely shitty.

      In comes Nintendo with a way to ensure that truly shitty games don't make it onto their console, and they rejuvenate an industry that almost killed itself entirely with too much openness.

      Again, this isn't some hypothetical bullshit argument about whether open source is superior on moral grounds from someone who holds no real stake in the outcome. It's what actually happened in the industry.

    3. Re:Here's an idea! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But it's not 1983 any more. Shelf space is not really an issue. An abundance of crappy games does no harm in the age of the internet since they can easily be ignored.
      Back then gems would not find their way into stores because they got drowned in all the crappy games. Now with all the information at our fingertips this won't be an issue. Opening up a platform now will make it more successfull and it will result in tons of great games which can easily be recognized.

    4. Re:Here's an idea! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Have you tried browsing in the iStore, Google Play, or to a lesser extent, Steam. If you just want to see what is there, you have to wade through pages of flappy bird clones, runners, and all the other crap just to see anything interesting. Don't count on ratings either, many of the good games get bogged down with "Overrated - 1 Star" and "Doesn't fold my laundry - 1 star" while the horrible shit games get enough 5 star reviews (usually by the developer and their friends) to at least look legitimate.

  2. They should stop making consoles by Undead+Waffle · · Score: 2, Insightful

    With the Wii they realized they couldn't keep up with the PS and Xbox. Instead of trying to get people to buy their consoles for their games they should switch to just making games. Even if they required custom controllers for some of their games I doubt it would be hard to come out ahead.

  3. Re:Nintendo Has an R&D Problem by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Insightful

    FWIW the biggest problem in porting isn't the CPU architecture. It's not like you can share binaries between the platforms, and most of the code is not written in assembly anyway. The biggest time-suck tends to be different APIs

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  4. I'm buying games, not consoles by ArcadeMan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If there's both Zelda and Metroid made for the Wii U, I'll strongly consider buying it.

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