The Japanese company didn’t do bad in 2015, with its profits reaching 29.1 billion yen ($241m; £168m). However, it was 36% lower than for the same period in 2014. Overall, profits reported for the period ending last December were 40,558 million yen (about $336 million), down around a third from last year’s 59,515 million yen ($493).
According to the Wall Street Journal, the company has already started to distribute a software development kit for its new NX video game platform, people familiar with the matter said, suggesting that the company is on track to introduce the product as early as next year.
The company also points the success of its Splatoon shooter and Super Mario Maker platform games for the Wii U, which have sold in total 7.4 million copies to date. The main disadvantage is the results which show that Nintendo’s main problem is the suffering during the holidays, when game sales are usually strong. In fact, during the Christmas period, less than one games were sold for every Wii U.
We should also underline the fact that Nintendo has also trimmed back a few services over the year, with TVii, and Club Nintendo, being put out to pasture – not to mention the unexpected loss of popular CEO Satoru Iwata.
Piers Harding-Rolls, from the IHS consultancy said: “The history of how the Wii U was marketed and users’ actual experiences have not lived up to expectations”. And he continued by saying: “Even with some compelling games like Splatoon, they still haven’t managed to drive sales of the platform”.
To sum up, we could say that Nintendo has some positives to look forward to in 2016. Next month sees the 20th anniversary of Pokémon, which will be celebrated with a Pokémon day (Feb 27) and a new 3DS bundle. And of course, a new platform in the form of the mysterious NX, for which only a few details were disclosed, other than it’ll involve fresh hardware and gameplay concepts.