Technology for the day

It's a rapidly changing world, as Denver Nicks notes in a Time article about Nintendo:

Video game maker Nintendo is doing some soul searching after cutting forecasted sales of its new Wii U gaming system by almost 70 percent, forcing the company to radically reassess its strategy in a changing gaming industry.
The company’s president, Satoru Iwata, told reporters Friday there would be a “major management shake-up” at the company but that he would not resign, Reuters reports. He also promised the company is “thinking about a new business structure.”
“Given the expansion of smart devices, we are naturally studying how smart devices can be used to grow the game-player business,” Iwata said. “It’s not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone.
“We failed to reach our target for hardware sales during the year-end, when revenues are the highest,” he said.
Nintendo’s disappointing sales have pushed it to a third consecutive annual loss, Reuters reports. The company has steadfastly declined to allow its games—many including some of the biggest brand names in gaming, like Mario—to be played on competitive game systems or on the mobile devices to which gamers are increasingly turning.

Chang-Ran Kim has a Reuters article on the same subject:

Nintendo Co Ltd said recently that sales of its Wii U consoles had flopped, pushing it to a third consecutive annual loss and raising a question mark over its future in a home console market increasingly dominated by Sony Corp and Microsoft Corp.
The company that got its start making playing cards more than a century ago slashed its global Wii U sales forecast for the year to 31 March by almost seventy percent, to 2.8 million units. It cut its sales forecast for its handheld 3DS to just over thirteen million units from eighteen million. The Wii U is the successor to its hit Wii console.
Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata, who last year pledged to return the hobbled game maker to profit this business year, apologized to shareholders at a briefing in Osaka, Japan, but said his failure to fulfill his promise did not mean he had to resign. "There will be no major management shake-up in the short term," Iwata told reporters.
Pressure will likely mount on the architect of the Wii success in 2006 to step aside or shift course to focus on making money from Super Mario and other software titles. Nintendo, so far, has refused to allow its games to be played on machines built by competitors or on tablets or other mobile devices that are used by gamers. In the past the company has blamed a lack of titles for poor sales, but even its popular family-friendly games are losing out on sales to more hard-core titles like Grand Theft Auto played on rival machines.
"The fact that the 'Wii U strategy' has failed is disappointing, and will likely trigger a sell-off as soon as the market opens," said Makoto Kikuchi, chief executive of Myojo Asset Management.
Nintendo this business year now expects an operating loss of 35 billion yen (335.76 million dollars) compared with an initial forecast for a hundred billion yen profit. The new estimate also falls drastically short of the average forecast of a 54.7 billion yen profit in a survey of eighteen analysts by Thomson Reuters.
The latest warning comes just three months after the Japanese company reiterated its sales projections for the Wii U, counting on the console to revive its fortunes as Microsoft released its new XBox One and Sony released its PlayStation 4 to the public. "We failed to reach our target for hardware sales during the year-end, when revenues are the highest," said Iwata.
In 2006, Iwata was celebrated worldwide after creating a new niche with the Wii console designed for the whole family to use, rather than hardcore gamers. That success boosted Nintendo's cash pile to around fourteen billion dollars, money it will have to dip into again to help cover its latest deficit.
Nintendo also warned of a net loss of 25 billion yen for the year ending on 31 March 2014, a substantial reversal from its prior projection of a 55 billion yen profit. It now expects revenues of 590 billion yen, down 36 percent from its prior forecast. It cut its full-year dividend to 100 yen from 260 yen.
Nintendo shares have fallen almost ten percent since hitting a two-and-a-half year high of 15,880 yen on 10 January 2014. The stock climbed 55 percent in 2013, in line with a 57 percent rally by the benchmark Nikkei average, but underperforming a 91 percent surge by rival Sony.

Rico says you couldn't get him to play a video game with a gub, so this matters not to him, but he has friends for whom these are serious matters...