Nintendo reports loss on shaky Wii U sales

FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2013 file photo, shoppers take escalators painted with the logos of Nintendo and Super Mario characters at an electronics store in Tokyo. Nintendo Co. sank to a worse-than-expected loss for the fiscal first quarter on lagging Wii U and 3DS video-game machine sales. But the Japanese company behind Super Mario and Pokemon games stuck to its annual forecasts Wednesday, July 30, 2014 for a 20 billion yen ($196 million) profit on 590 billion yen ($5.8 billion) sales. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File) FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2013 file photo, shoppers take escalators painted with the logos of Nintendo and Super Mario characters at an electronics store in Tokyo. Nintendo Co. sank to a worse-than-expected loss for the fiscal first quarter on lagging Wii U and 3DS video-game machine sales. But the Japanese company behind Super Mario and Pokemon games stuck to its annual forecasts Wednesday, July 30, 2014 for a 20 billion yen ($196 million) profit on 590 billion yen ($5.8 billion) sales. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)

By Associated Press July 30, 2014 3 min read

TOKYO (AP) – Nintendo Co. sank to a worse-than-expected loss for the fiscal first quarter on lagging Wii U and 3DS video-game machine sales.

But the Japanese company behind Super Mario and Pokemon games stuck to its annual forecasts Wednesday for a 20 billion yen ($196 million) profit on 590 billion yen ($5.8 billion) sales.

Kyoto-based Nintendo reported a 9.92 billion yen ($97.3 million) April-June loss compared with an 8.62 billion yen profit a year earlier.

Quarterly sales totaled 74.695 billion yen ($732.3 million), down 8 percent from a year earlier.

Nintendo has been fighting to maintain profits amid competition from games and social media apps on smartphones and other mobile devices. The company also faces competition from rivals Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp., which are aggressively pushing their game machines with holiday shoppers.