I believe they've made losses in 3 recent years, not 1. Specifically the years ending March 31st 2012, 2013, and 2014. They managed to hit profitability again in 2015 and 2016, but it was for relatively small amounts.

The above is likley why Nintendo have opted to be conservative with their Switch estimates (just 10 million for FY2017), and why they're willing to risk some of the Switch's short term potential in favour of keeping the 3DS alive a bit longer. The 8th generation has been a difficult few years for Nintendo, so it makes sense they'd opt for a low-and-steady approach.

Lame excuses as always, specially knowing that Nintendo has been profitable always except for one single year and always using their games as main moneymaker while Sony had many years with red numbers.



Oh, and making games for mobiles is part of gaming, you can say whatever you want about it, it doesn't change reality.

Thanks for the chart.  So looking at that Sony have just posted their second best ever year for gaming.  Next year I predict they'll have their best ever and the year after a new record. 

I believe they've made losses in 3 recent years, not 1. Specifically the years ending March 31st 2012, 2013, and 2014. They managed to hit profitability again in 2015 and 2016, but it was for relatively small amounts.

The above is likley why Nintendo have opted to be conservative with their Switch estimates (just 10 million for FY2017), and why they're willing to risk some of the Switch's short term potential in favour of keeping the 3DS alive a bit longer. The 8th generation has been a difficult few years for Nintendo, so it makes sense they'd opt for a low-and-steady approach.

Took the time to look it up!, Microsoft mixes together a lot of things, like the Surface pc, under the same revenue statements without specifying their % of the total profit. Also, they separate hardware sales from xbox live sales. And on top of that they mix xbox live's revenue with different streams of revenue from other products. A total headache, and I believe that is totally on purpose because from what I found, even with all those things combined, xbox doesn't really make that much of a profit. Sony has a lot of different segments but they do specify rather well how much their game division makes year on year. And Nintendo is just Nintendo. Losses are between brackets.

The total is from 2011 onwards, since the 3DS release and the start of the 8th gen! Sony is clearly winning this gen, obviously. But even with that, I really don't understand why the argument of "Nintendoom" is even a thing. Sony hasn't really make that much of a profit in their gaming division throughout the years. Nintendo is by FAR the gaming king, regarding profit. Less than 4 billion dollars all time for Sony vs more than 33 billion dollars for Nintendo.

And it's not like Nintendo screwed up that badly with the Wii U. Sony lost 4 and a half billion dollars between 2007 and 2010. The Ps4 isn't even close of breaking even for Sony. It needs at least 1 and a half more years for it to break even in fact. But Nintendo? Rock solid profit for the foreseeable future, and their losses are more than made up for already. 

Btw, I believe Sony has an incredible future with the ps4 too, I'm just pointing out the stupidity of the arguments against Nintendo. Numbers don't lie, and what really matters is profit, not unit solds. 80 million PS3 consoles sold vs the Wii U's 13 million, care to guess which one was profitable?

Oh and Spanish native speaker here! Sorry for any mistakes! Feel free to point them out (:

At the end it was 2 fiscal years of loses, both in the same gen.

Could you link me a source? Nintendo's FY2016 reports shows 3 consecutive losses in the years i mention, not 2.

2012 :    $526 Million Loss
2013 :    $75 Million Profit
2014 :    $225 Million Loss

They made a net profit in 2013. https://www.statista.com/statistics/216625/net-income-of-nintendo-since-2008/

You may be thinking of operating profit in 2011, 2012, 2013 they posted operating losses.