Thanks to a combination of factors that don't play into Nintendo's hand, the company behind Mario today projected a net loss of 20 billion yen ($264 million) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012.

That's an enormous shift from where that number was originally projected to be; it had been expected to come in at a 20 billion yen profit by the company. Analysts weren't quite as high in their estimates, but they were nonetheless expecting the company to turn a profit. Bloomberg notes how this would be the first time since 1981, when Nintendo started to release consolidated earnings reports, that it suffers a net loss over the course of a full fiscal year.

With roughly 80 percent of the company's business coming from the Americas and Europe, the strength of the yen is hurting Nintendo's bottom line. Also prompting the drop from Nintendo's earlier projections was the unexpected price cut of the 3DS over the summer. (It went from selling at $249.99 to $169.99 in the United States.) Investors were urged at the time to wait until the system could experience its first holiday shopping season before passing judgment on the system's performance.

To date, the 3DS has sold 6.68 million units worldwide, according to the numbers Nintendo shared today. 3.07 million of those came between April 1 and September 30. The company's full-year expectations are for the 3DS to end up selling 16 million units by March 31, the same number we've heard before. It'll have to do that on the back of the holiday shopping season and the system's first big, original releases in Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7, as well as Monster Hunter 3G in Japan.

The past six months saw 8.13 million software units for 3DS sold, bringing the life-to-date number up to 17.56 million. Nintendo's most recent projection for the full year was for 70 million software units to be sold, an increase from its previously cited 62 million number. It turns out both of those numbers were too high, as it now believes only 50 million will be sold by the end of March 2012.

Wii hardware is still expected to sell 12 million for the full year after selling 3.35 million between April and September. The DS line (DS, DS Lite, DSi, and DSi XL are all included in this figure) did 2.58 million units and is expected to end up at 6 million, down from the previous number of 9 million.

"Sales of Nintendo DS hardware and Nintendo 3DS software were weaker than expected," the company said in a statement. "In addition, yen appreciation was beyond expectation level and the exchange losses totaled 52.4 billion yen ($691.4 million)."

Nintendo admitted the 3DS "has yet to have many hit titles," only highlighting The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D by name as a million-unit seller.

Nintendo's stock price has taken a sizable hit this week. Word emerged earlier this week that Nintendo would report its first half losses as 100 billion yen ($1.32 billion yen), far worse than the 55 billion yen ($725.57 million) expected. Nintendo closed out Monday on the New York Stock Exchange at $19.42; that number current sits at $17.67 and has been steadily dropping all day. In Osaka on Monday, Nintendo was at 11,840 yen ($156) and is now at 11,100 yen ($146).

Image courtesy of Yahoo

Changes are on the horizon for 3DS in a number of ways. Nintendo recently outlined a number of changes being brought to the system through a firmware update like the ability to record 3D video. None of those are likely to actually change the system's fortunes, but the release of the aforementioned Monster Hunter 3G will cause a big uptick in sales in Japan. Since its announcement, sales of the system have been up in Nintendo's homeland, and presumably the game's release would only continue that. The same can also be said for Monster Hunter 4, which Nintendo revealed was coming to the 3DS last month.

The 3DS is also getting the slide pad extension or Frankenstick attachment in December to coincide with the release of 3G. Its initial use will be for Monster Hunter, though it will work with other games. Nintendo has yet to announce plans to bring the add-on to North America or Europe, although a trademark filing has indicated its name will be the Circle Pad Pro once the announcement is made.