Nintendo is back to money making ways and has reported a net profit of 41.8 billion yen ($350 million) for the fiscal year through March, a first from annual profit since March 2011. Nothing significant but a huge improvement from deep losses of the previous year, as it readies to enter a long-delayed smartphone games arena.
Nintendo CEO and president Satoru Iwata said that approximately five mobile titles will be released by March 2017.
“You may think it is a small number,” said Satoru, “but when we aim to make each title a hit, and because we want to thoroughly operate every one of them for a significant amount of time after their releases, this is not a small number at all and should demonstrate our serious commitment to the smart device business.”
Kyoto-based video game developer was better than its own forecast for a 30 billion yen ($251 million) profit. The declining sales of Wii U console was result of company’s 23.2 billion yen last fiscal year.
Nintendo recently announced that it was entering an alliance with Japanese mobile game company DeNA Co to develop games for mobile devices. The falloff in appetite for game machines over the years is partly because people are increasingly playing games or doing social media and other activities on smartphones instead. Nintendo has repeatedly had to lower prices on gadgets to woo buyers.
Its main rivals in the business are Sony with the PlayStation machines and Microsoft Corp. with the Xbox One machine. Both companies have done better in adapting to the era of online and mobile games.
Nintendo’s fortunes have gotten a perk from the recent relatively favorable exchange rate. The dollar has been strengthening, and a strong yen had in the past battered Nintendo earnings.
Nintendo’s sales for the fiscal year dipped nearly 4 percent to 549.8 billion yen ($4.6 billion).
Nintendo is expecting profit for the fiscal year through March 2016 to climb to 35 billion yen ($293 million), up 16 percent from the fiscal year ended March this year, as Pokemon characters and Luigi the plumber start arriving on smartphones and tablets.
It did not give details, except to say: “A new source of revenue is expected from a gaming application for smart devices which will be released this year.”
Annual sales are projected to rise nearly 4 percent to 570 billion yen ($4.8 billion).
Nintendo is expecting to sell 3.4 million Wii U consoles for the fiscal year through March 2016, more than the 3.38 million sold for the fiscal year just ended.