Sometimes, you don’t have a good year
Today Nintendo released its third quarter financials. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the company took a $15 million loss. Following that news, Nintendo’s executives are taking a substantial pay cut.
The WiiU is Nintendo’s next-gen console. It released well before Xbox One and Playstation 4, and hasn’t sold nearly as well. According to Polygon, the last nine months haven’t been meeting the previous projections from the company. Nintendo suffered a loss of $15 million in the last quarter ending December 31, 2013.
Even with the holiday sales boost, both hardware and software sales fell below expectations. The WiiU, expecting to sell 2.8 million units, landed at 2.41 million units instead. In addition to missing the mark with hardware installs, the 19 million target set for the software fell just shy with 16 million units.
Needless to say, that’s a lot of money to lose, and it’s not even over yet. In the same report Nintendo, forecast a $355 million total loss for the 2013 year.
Wait, there’s more?
Following the release of the Nintendo’s financial short-comings, President Satoru Iwata also announced he will be taking a pay cut. This isn’t just a couple of vacation days, he’s giving up 50% of his salary for 5 months due to the monetary woes. He concluded that the rest of the executives will be taking a 20% – 30% pay cut too.
Hopefully 2014 will bring in more customers for Nintendo. Games like Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Bayonetta 2, and Mario Kart 8 should help sell a few more units.
