Game company Nintendo Co. is at a loss for its sales for the first quarter of 2010. This quarter, the maker of the Wii console and DS, are in the red as sales went down. On Thursday (7/28), Nintendo suffered a loss of 25.22B yen ($289.16M) for the April-June period. Last year, they gained a profit of 42.32B yen. The loss is the first for them in six quarters. Sales for the first fiscal quarter went down to 25.6% to 188.65B yen ($2.16B).

Nintendo sold 3.15M DS consoles and 22.42M units of software. Last year, during the same quarter, they were up 5.97M for the DS and 29.01M for software.

The company blames the competition (in Japan and Europe) and economy for the sales loss. It doesn�t help that the overseas exchange losses went down to 70.5B ($808M). They had to cut prices just so that consumer�s would buy more consoles.

The DS beat out the Wii, with sales of 3.04M sold this year compared to last year�s 2.23M. The Wii only sold 28.17M, a drop from the previous year�s 31.07M.�Sales were down worldwide, with a majority it coming from Europe.

Because of all the rivals, Nintendo aims to outdo its competitors in the 3D market. In June they unveiled a 3DS, a 3D version of the handheld DS console, but without the glasses. Releases are scheduled for Japan, U.S., and Europe with nine game titles. No specific release date has been announced.

With its earnings, the company is still keeping its projections throughout the fiscal year (March 11). They expect a net profit of 200B yen ($2.29B), 12.5% from last year�s sales of 1.4T yen ($16.01B).

source: mainichi