Nintendo has been unable to arrest a slide in console sales as more people play games on smartphones and tablets. The company’s apparent solution? A move into healthcare.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata yesterday vowed to stick to the company’s old ways and refused to resign or cut product prices despite its dismal earnings, but said the video game maker will enter the healthcare industry.
Iwata did not give details of what he called his “quality of life” business plans, except that it would not be a wearable device.
Kyoto-based Nintendo already offers fitness games. Iwata promised to disclose details later this year.
Iwata displayed his typical stubbornness in brushing off criticism about how the maker of Super Mario and Pokemon games should update itself for the era of smartphone and other mobile devices.
The popularity of such devices has been drawing consumers away from consoles devoted to games, but Nintendo has resisted changing its business to incorporate tablets and smartphones.
“Nintendo has value because it is different from others,” Iwata said at a Tokyo event for analysts and reporters, a day after he and other top executives took a pay cut for the company’s poor performance.
Nintendo on Wednesday reported a ￥10.2 billion (US$99 million) profit for April through December, down from ￥14.55 billion a year earlier as sales of Wii U home consoles and 3DS hand-held devices languished. It did not break down quarterly numbers.
Nintendo has slashed its annual forecast for Wii U sales from 9 million units to just 2.8 million, fewer than a third of its earlier estimate.
Earlier this month, the company forecast a loss of ￥25 billion for the fiscal year through March 2014.
Nintendo had earlier forecast a profit of ￥55 billion.
The company’s shares fell 4.3 percent to ￥12,325 yesterday.
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
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