Nintendo Q1 FY16: company posts $232 million loss - the largest quarterly loss in five years

Due to slumping sales and a huge hit in foreign exchange, Nintendo has posted its largest Q1 loss since 2011.

Today, the firm posted its Q1 2016 results [PDF] noting a ¥24.5 billion ($232 million) loss compared to $78.7 million in profit during the same quarter in 2015. Sales for the quarter came to ‎¥61.7 billion ($585 million), down 31% year-over-year (yoy).

As GI.biz notes, some of the loss could also be attributed to R&D for the Nintendo NX, which is set for release in March 2017.

For the quarter, sales for the Nintendo 3DS family of systems were down 7% yoy to 940,000 units sold, compared to the 1.01 million units shifted in 2015.

Will U sales also declined by 53% with 220,000 units sold compared to 470,000 the prior year. The system has now sold just over 13 million units to-date.

Software units fared a bit better yoy despite the decline in revenue from said units sales. There were 8.5 million software titles sold for 3Ds, up from 7.9 million yoy. Games sold for Wii U were up slightly from 4.6 million in Q1 2015 to 4.7 million in Q1 2016.

Still, as mentioned above, revenue from unit sales declined ‎¥9.5 billion to ¥34.9 billion ($331 million) compared to ¥44.4 billion yoy.

In the Smart Devices and IP related income section of the report, Nintendo reported ¥1.6 billion ($15 million) in revenue, up from ¥932 for the same period in 2015. This isn't a large jump, even with Miitomo added into the mix.

Nintendo posted a notice to investors last week, reminding the financial sector (thus taking a 18% hit in share prices) that while it maintains 32% of voting power in The Pokemon Company (TPC), Pokemon Go is Niantic Labs' game. The app was developed between the two, with the latter paying a licensing fee to TPC

With that being said, it's plausible and possibly obvious to assume Pokemon Go madness could cause an uptick in standard Pokemon game releases and accessories - current long-time fans notwithstanding - when newcomers brought to the franchise because of Poekmon Go are factored in. The Pokemon Company is a joint venture between Nintendo, Game Freak and Creatures, so any Pokemon merchandise sold will be divvied up between each.

What the percentage for each is unknown, but going by Nintendo's projected revenue forecast for the fiscal year, Pokemon Go is expected to generate ¥500 billion ($4.7 billion) in revenue - which would be a 1% increase for Nintendo year-over-year.

Nintendo always hosts a meeting with investors after releasing financial reports, and once the English transcript is up, we'll comb through it for more information.