With aging hardware, Nintendo posts first yearly loss of $460 million

The next console needs to get here quickly for Nintendo. The game hardware company announced its first annual operating loss of 37.3 billion yen ($459.54 million) from 2011 to 2012. They anticipate a turnaround in numbers at the same level in the positive this year as a next generation console is expected.

Price cuts to their systems weren’t enough to keep sales from dropping 36.2%.

Nintendo intends to sell the 3DS “below cost” soon, following strong sales after a substantial price cut last year. Still, they weren’t anywhere near the numbers of the original DS, selling 13.53 million 3DS devices versus 80.2 million of the original DS. The original DS still managed to sell 5.1 million units in the last year.