TOKYO, Japan (AFP) —
Nintendo's first-quarter net profit fell nearly 13
percent as the video-game lockdown boom lost momentum, the Japanese firm said
Thursday, after reporting record earnings in the previous financial year.
اضافة اعلان
Long periods of stay-at-home orders and other restrictions during the COVID-19
pandemic fuelled a run of good fortune for game-makers worldwide.
But analysts warn of a slowdown in demand for indoor entertainment as vaccines
help life move towards normality, despite the spread of the Delta variant.
Nintendo said it generated 92.7 billion yen for the three months to June,
compared with 106.5 billion yen in the same period last year.
It left its forecast for the year to March 2022 unchanged, still expecting
to report a 340-billion-yen net profit on sales of 1.6 trillion yen.
The firm posted its highest ever annual profit in 2020-21, propelled by the
runaway popularity of its Switch console and the family-friendly game "Animal
Crossing".
"Hardware and software sales in the first quarter of last fiscal year
were substantially driven by the March 2020 release of 'Animal Crossing: New
Horizons'," Nintendo said in a statement on Thursday.
"So compared to then, hardware sales were down 21.7 percent and
software sales were down 10.2 percent year-on-year."
Last month, Nintendo announced it would release a new model of the Switch in
October — but analysts are divided over prospects for the Switch OLED, with the
recommended price higher than that of the original console.
"The results were weaker than expected, partially due to sluggish sales
of Switch Lite consoles," Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research
Institute in Tokyo, told AFP.
"The lockdown boom is slowing, but its performance remained
competitive," he said. "Nintendo still has a good chance to upgrade
its full-year forecast later this year."
The Switch, which can be handheld or used with a TV, was released in 2017,
while the handheld-only Switch Lite model came out in 2019.
Nintendo's new console sales have previously tended to peak in the third
year, and then taper off.
Yasuda warned that the global chip shortage, driven by a surge in demand for
electronic devices during the pandemic, could also pose a risk for Nintendo.
"The extended impact of both COVID-19 and the global semiconductor
shortage creates a state of continued uncertainty, with the possibility of
future impact on production and shipping," the gaming giant said.
Serkan Toto, a games industry consultant at Tokyo-based Kantan Games, said
the Switch was "now in the middle of its lifecycle", but was
optimistic for its future.
"At the end of the fiscal year they will have three big Pokemon
releases. So, Nintendo seems to be in a much better shape in terms of
first-party content, and that's going to drive hardware sales," he said
before the earnings release.
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