Currency Fluctuations Could Put the Squeeze on Nintendo

The fluctuating value of currencies around the world could have serious repercussions for Nintendo.

It’s something that a lot of us will be able to relate to: You change some money for your vacation, and when you change back what you have left a couple of weeks later, it’s not worth quite as much. Now imagine trying to run a business like that, and you can get a sense of why Nintendo might be a little worried.

Speaking to the BBC, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said that instability in the global currency markets represented a real challenge for his company. “If the Yen, or any currency, changes over one, two or three years, then that is something that we corporations have to deal with,” said Iwata.

“However, if over a week a currency fluctuates by five or ten percent, there has to be something seriously wrong with the economy. From that perspective, we cannot say our [global] economy as a whole has been stabilized and there is uncertainty on how to estimate our profits,” he said.

This isn’t Nintendo complaining that it doesn’t know if it’s executives can sleep on king-sized beds of money, or just queen-sized either. Nintendo exports the majority of its products, so devaluations of the pound, dollar, and euro, can create a great deal of uncertainty for the company going forward. What Iwata is saying is that Nintendo will have difficulty predicting how much money it will make, which may result in Nintendo being a lot more cautious in the future.

Source: BBC