Struggling Japanese video games maker Nintendo saw $1.2 billion (£730m) wiped off its market value today after slashing sales and profit estimates on Friday.
Nintendo shares in Tokyo fell as much as 18% before closing down 6.2%, after the video games maker warned on Friday of slower-than-expected hardware sales.
The Super Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong creator said it was set to make a loss of 35bn yen (£200m) for the year-end March 31, compared with a previous forecast of a 100bn yen (£580m) profit. The once pioneering company made a loss of 36.4 bn (£21m) yen last year.
Nintendo blamed slower-than-expected sales of its Wii U console for the loss, slashing its estimate for the number of units it expects to shift from 9 million to 2.8 million. The figure is in stark contrast to the original Wii, launched in 2006, which sold 100 million units and became the world’s best selling console.
President Satoru Iwata said a discounting drive had helped sales of the Wii U but admitted it still “fell short of our targeted recovery by a large margin.”
Nintendo has lost casual gamer market share to smartphones, while Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation have cemented their dominance in the serious gaming market.
