Nintendo Co.

In "Super Mario 3DLand", Nintendo Co. will make its iconic Italian plumber battle turtle-like Koopa Troopas on its 3D player. The company instead should develop titles for Apple's iPhone, investors say.

The rift highlights the dilemma president Satoru Iwata faces as consumers shun Nintendo devices to play games on iPhones, iPads and Facebook's website. The flop of the 3DS debut prompted the company to cut prices 40 percent in Japan and 32 percent in the US, the first time the games developer has resorted to such a move within six months of a product's debut.

Sales of Nintendo Co.'s most important new gaming device have plunged since its release, the company said on Thursday, prompting the videogame pioneer to slash its profit forecast and scramble to deeply discount the gadget to revive sales.

Nintendo Co.'s place atop the world of videogames, and perhaps the course of the industry itself, is riding on a geek romance.

On Saturday, Nintendo launched its first all-new machine in nearly five years, a handheld player with a three-dimensional display that doesn't need the clunky glasses required for most 3D viewing.

The landscape of the JPY50 billion (USD611 million) videogame industry and the prospects for one of Japan's few remaining world-beating companies may rest on the fate of the new gadget, called the 3DS. 

Like many Japanese companies, Nintendo Co. recently reported a big hit to its financial results from the strong yen.

But unlike its brethren, reduced exports weren't the main cause of Nintendo's first interim net loss in seven years. The bigger problem for the home of Super Mario was the company's unusually large USD7.4 billion pile of cash held in foreign currencies at the end of its fiscal first half, representing nearly 70 percent of Nintendo's total cash holdings.