Struggling UK Gaming Retail Giant Blames Nintendo for Sinking Profits

There's nothing quite like passing the buck when your back is against the wall. It's not your fault that you snapped on the Starbucks barista, it's because your mechanic screwed up your alignment and you were just frustrated. It's not your fault that you have a hard time accepting new ideas, it's because of your upbringing and the way your parents raised you. And hey, it's not GAME's fault that its profits are tanking, it's all Nintendo's fault for not making enough Switches!

UK video game giant GAME is about to report some really disappointing financials to investors, according to Gamesindustry.biz, and the company wants to make it perfectly clear that it's all because Nintendo didn't come through with enough consoles to pull it out of the hole. To be fair, GAME also cited a continued "softness" in its Xbox and PlayStation business, so maybe it's not all Nintendo's fault, but it's certainly not GAME's fault.

GAME reported a decrease in profits totaling almost 27% for the first half of the year, but seemed confident that investors could expect a huge upswing based on the early success of the Nintendo Switch. As long as the Switch kept booming, GAME would too. When things didn't turn out quite as expected, GAME made the following statement:

"In our half year results announcement on 29 March 2017, we stated that we expected the challenging trading environment faced in the UK retail market in the first half to continue into the second half of the financial year. We also stated that we anticipated an overall positive sales performance in the second half of the year, underpinned by the successful launch and continued consumer demand for the Nintendo Switch console, as well as further progress across our other UK sales initiatives, although this positive momentum would be highly dependent on stock availability of Nintendo Switch.

"Consumer demand for Nintendo Switch has been, and remains, very strong, however the level of supply to the UK market has been lower than expected. These lower levels, combined with the continued softness in our core Xbox and PlayStation markets, have impacted sales. The Group still expects to deliver positive Group GTV2 growth in the second half of approximately 5 to 6%, however this is below our previous expectation. As a result, we now expect Adjusted EBITDA for the full year to be substantially below previous expectations."

What's quite funny, though, is the fact that GAME also tried to end things on a positive note, stating that it expects its next financial year (which will end in July 2018) to be significantly more profitable due to the continued success of Nintendo Switch and apparently-growing interest in Xbox and PlayStation. That sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Look, maybe we were a little too hard on GAME back there. We can empathize. Many of us know how bad it sucks that the Nintendo Switch is in such short supply right now, but we can't really blame Nintendo. There are component supply issues that should be resolved following the launch of the latest iPhone -- in theory -- so let's keep our chins up.