Nintendo Uses Its Strong Black Friday to Push Through to the New Year - The UpStream

Nintendo Uses Its Strong Black Friday to Push Through to the New Year

posted Sunday Dec 4, 2011 by Nicholas DiMeo

Nintendo Uses Its Strong Black Friday to Push Through to the New Year

A failed product launch quickly followed by a price drop of that same product are two reasons a company has to apologize for a potential upcoming disaster. Ask Sony for the other reasons a company could fail. For Nintendo, however, things weren't looking so good after the 3DS fiasco. Many analysts of the gaming industry were predicting the tragic end of an iconic company if the holiday season wasn't a success for them.

This week, Nintendo responded to the call. We have the details after the break.

As they try to run away from the white light, Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo America, said that the company does 60 percent of its total revenue during the holiday season, which is about 10 percent higher than the industry average.

In the next five weeks, I need to sell a lot of Nintendo 3DS, Wii and software.

These next five weeks are going to be a huge factor in whether Nintendo posts its first ever annual net loss. Reggie attests some of the gaming company's troubles to the rising price of the yen, as it had to reduce its sales forecast.

Every dollar I send back to Japan is worthless, so for us as a business, what I need to do is focus on selling more hardware, more software and drive revenue as best as I can because I can't impact the currency markets.

Nintendo looks to its faithful Wii console as the platform to use as a means to generate sales numbers. On Black Friday, Wal-Mart slashed prices on the limited edition blue Wii to $99.96. Fils-Aime commented by saying that, "Wal-Mart lost money on every Wii they sold. We did not lose money on it." Nobody would say how much the evil retailer lost, but we do know that 500,000 Wiis were sold to Wal-Mart for that day. Combine those record numbers with the hopeful success of Super Mario 3D Land, Zelda: Skyward Sword and MarioKart 7 and Nintendo looks to recover and get out of the red by the new year. Nintendo is also launching a pink version of the 3DS, to try and boost more hardware sales, which would lead to more software sales.

A lack of first-party titles at launch for the 3DS led it to its dismal product launch and quick price cut and Nintendo hopes to learn from its mistake and do better with the Wii U, Nintendo's latest project.

We had to go back and reduce the price of the 3DS and we certainly don't want to go through that when we launch the Wii U.

For the love of all that is 8-bit, we hope for good things in the next five weeks for Nintendo.

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