Nintendo Slashes Profit Forecast For Fiscal Year Ending March 2012

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Okay, okay, so the 3DS isn’t selling as well as Nintendo expected. We’ve known this for a while now, but even though the gaming press has had a field day with 3DS sales, it can’t be that bad, right? Apparently, it’s pretty bad.

How bad? Nintendo has drastically lowered their profit forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2012. In fact, it’s down a whopping 82% from the original prediction – about $1.41 billion – to a mere $257 million. While $257 million may seem like a lot to you, that won’t be a very attractive number for investors to see, especially considering what it used to be at.

Nintendo says this decrease is in order to, “reflect the trends of stronger-than-expected yen appreciation and sales performance, the decided price reduction of the Nintendo 3DS hardware, and the sales outlook for the holiday season.” This implies that they don’t expect the 3DS, Wii, or DS to be especially strong sellers during the holiday season this year, which is surprising considering that Nintendo usually cleans up around Christmas time thanks to the Wii and DS.

Hopefully Nintendo can see sales rise now that they’ve announced a 3DS price cut, but more importantly, hopefully they realize now that the 3DS wasn’t ready to launch at all, and they do everything they can to avoid the same kind of flub with the Wii U. Of course, they probably won’t, but a man can dream, right?