Nintendo"s stock price plunged by as much as 20 percent earlier today after the console game publisher announced poor financial results on Thursday. Bloomberg reports that Nintendo"s stock price drop was the worst in 20 years. Another Bloomberg report says that Hiroshi Yamauchi, the former president of Nintendo, saw the wealth of his own Nintendo stock go down as much as $300 million today as a result of the price drop.
Investors are pulling out of Nintendo after the company announced on Thursday that it has cut its profit forecast for its current fiscal year to just 20 billion yen ($257 million) an 82 percent decrease from the company"s previous profit predictions of 110 billion yen ($1.41 billion). Part of the reason for the huge profit cut is the price reduction announced for the Nintendo 3DS portable console. Nintendo revealed on Thursday the console"s price will be cut in the US from $249.99 to just $169.99 beginning on August 12. The price cut comes after Nintendo admitted it had only sold 830,000 units of the console in the US since its launch last March. People who buy the Nintendo 3DS before August 12 will be compensated via downloads of 20 free games.
For the quarter that ended on June 30, Nintendo recorded revenues of 93 billion yen ($1.2 billion) which is about half what the company recorded in revenue for the same period a year ago. Nintendo recorded a net loss of 26 billion yen ($334 million) for the quarter.