Nintendo hit by 42 percent crash in DS sales; posts half year loss

Appropriately, considering Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime's comments about Apple being a significant threat, Nintendo has announced its 2010 half year financials (April to September).

Frankly, they're not very good.

Net sales are down 34 percent year on year to ¥363 billion ($4.5 billion).

Operating income is down 48 percent to ¥54 billion ($670 million), and compared to a profit of ¥111 billion ($1.4 billion) for H1 2009, the company made a net loss of ¥2.0 billion ($25 million).

Still, Nintendo ended the six month period with cash and short term investments worth ¥1.38 trillion ($17 billion), up 27 percent year on year.

Waiting for 3DS

The reason for this performance is a marked drop in sales of Nintendo's Wii and DS consoles.

While massively popular, sales have peaked and both now are riding their respective downwards sales curves. The appreciation of the Yen compared to other currencies, especially the dollar, also reduced revenue.

Nintendo sold 6.69 million DSes during the six months, down 42 percent year on year.

This was split between 2.26 million DSis (down 68 percent), 3.2 million DSi XLs, and 1.22 DS Lites.

Deeper and down

Sales of DS games were down 23 percent to 54.8 million units, while 377 SKUs were released globally compared to 589 a year ago.

The best selling games during the period were Pokemons Black and White, which sold 4.07 million units in Japan. They are yet to be released in the US and Europe,.

Sales of Wii were down 14 percent to 4.97 million units worldwide.

Cummulatively, Nintendo has sold 135 million DSes to-date, of which 20 million are DSis and 5.29 million are DSi XLs.

The next console in the family, the 3DS, is due for release globally in Q1 2011, starting with Japan on February 26.

[source: Nintendo (PDF)]