Can Nintendo Rebuild?
Over the past few years, when it was racking up record profits and crushing its rivals in the video game industry, Nintendo often drew comparisons to Apple (APPL). The two had gone against the conventional wisdom to create gadgets and software that consumers couldn’t seem to get enough of. But these days Nintendo is hurting. On Oct. 29 the Kyoto company reported weaker-than-expected earnings for its fiscal second quarter ended Sept. 30. Nintendo also revised downward its forecasts for the fiscal year ending March 2010, saying it expects to sell fewer Wii living-room consoles and game software this year than it had previously thought. A day later, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told financial analysts and journalists that the company had been unprepared for the sudden drop in sales of its Wii living-room game console. “We sensed that the market mood was cooling off in the spring,” he said. “But frankly, we hadn’t expected to get as bad as it did by summer.” In the past six months the s
