Both Capcom and Nintendo have reported a substantial profit drop, but for very different reasons.
In a series of reports by gamesindustry.biz, Capcom suffered a June quarter profit drop of 90 per cent, from ¥2.2 billion to ¥213 million.
This loss has been attributed to poor European and US market sales of games including Lost Planet 2, Monster Hunter Tri and Ghost Trick. However, Capcom has claimed Super Street Fighter IV and Monster Hunter Online have shown steady growth.
Nintendo meanwhile has blamed the appreciation of the yen for a Q1 loss of ¥25 billion loss. Game sales remained strong – Super Mario Galaxy 2 shipped 4.09 million units worldwide, while Wii hardware sales were 3.04 million units.
In all 28.17 million units of Wii software and 22.42 million DS games were shipped, and Nintendo continues to forecast a financial year profit of ¥200 billion.
I imagine the appreciation of the yen is going to have a big impact on a number of the other major Japanese publishers and developers - though Square Enix will be sheltered to an extent thanks to its ownership of western publisher Eidos, it would be next in line to post a substantially downward profit for Q1.
Interestingly, however, Nintendo rival, Sony recently claimed its strong financials were in large part due to the PS3. Sony, of course, is a more 'global' company, but nevertheless, the plight of Capcom and Nintendo amongst a floundering yen just highlights how strong Sony's position really is right now.
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