Nintendo of America has announced on twitter that their accessory, Pokemon Go Plus, has been delayed from this week to September 2016. Pokemon Go Plus is a device that lets players enjoy Pokemon Go without staring at their smartphones. It uses vibration to notify the user of a pokemon or an event nearby. This is bad news coming off of Nintendo’s recent quarterly losses.
The #PokemonGO Plus accessory will now be released Sept 2016 instead of the originally expected end of July launch. https://t.co/QgjZf1aAV6
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) July 27, 2016
Nintendo announced a quarterly loss of 24.5 billion yen ($232 million) as stated by Bloomberg.com. This is a different result than the expectation they had of a 3.4 billion yen loss this quarter. Despite this, Nintendo has kept its outlook of 35 billion yen profit for the year. Nintendo stock fell 10% in German trading.
Despite the success of Pokemon Go, Nintendo has announced that they were seeing a limited financial impact from the game. It is developed by a studio it partially owns, Niantic Inc based out of San Francisco, and Nintendo only sees about 13% of revenue from Pokemon Go sales. Nintendo has been struggling at finding its next potential market as handheld gaming has shifted to mobile devices and the console market has shifted to Sony and Microsoft. The Wii U has failed to catch momentum and Nintendo plans on releasing their new console, the Nintendo NX, sometime next year. Rumors are stating that it is a combination home and mobile console but nothing has been confirmed yet.
What are your thoughts on Nintendo’s current situation? Leave a comment below of in the RGM forums.
