Yesterday, Nintendo el Presidente Satoru Iwata announced what many of us were expecting (and anticipating): Nintendo cut down their Wii U sales estimates from 9 million to just 2.8 million — in other words, the company expects to sell 2.8 million Wii U consoles this fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2014.
And the financial markets in the US and Japan did not like that. Nintendo shares dropped a massive 17%, wiping out $3 billion off of Nintendo’s market cap. Currently, the company has a market cap of $20 billion. Nintendo also announced that they will likely see a loss this year, which is something Nintendo has only done twice before as a publicly traded company.
Nintendo’s stock had actually been doing well over the past few months, rising 20% on good 3DS sales. However, Iwata now revealed that even the 3DS is doing worse than the company anticipated: they revised 3DS sales from 18 million down to 13.5 million.
Despite the bad news, Satoru Iwata says he will not step down. While he may carry a lot of the blame, Iwata has always been honest and has always taken responsibility. Earlier this year, he admitted that Nintendo was to blame for poor Wii U sales. A few years ago, Iwata took a pay cut of 50% as he felt responsible for the 3DS launch issues.
