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Struggling video game maker Nintendo will incorporate NFC in its planned Wii U home video game console, including support for payments, the company’s president Satoru Iwata said today.

Iwata, in a prepared operational briefing said the NFC support in the new touch-screen controller for the Wii U console will open new possibilities for interactive play and for payments.

“By installing this functionality, it will become possible to create cards and figurines that can electronically read and write data via noncontact NFC and to expand the new play format in the video game world,” he said in the statement.  “Adoption of this functionality will enable various other possibilities, such as using it as a means of making micropayments.”

Iwata added that NFC will play a role in the new network platform the Japan-based company plans to introduce. The Nintendo Network will not only enable competitions and communication among users, it will allow the company to sell software and other content online to consumers through the Wii U console and also the Nintendo handheld 3DS game player.   

He did not elaborate on the possible procedure for NFC payment transactions with the Wii U controller, but apparently players would be able to tap their contactless cards or smartphones with payment applications inside to pay for software downloads and other content, such as low-cost in-game items.

The company said it would have the Wii U available in time for year-end holiday-shopping season.

It’s the follow-up to the company’s Wii console, of which Nintendo now projects it will sell about 10 million units for the fiscal year ending in March 2012. That’s down from an earlier projected 13 million units.

Nintendo is the first major video game maker announcing plans to build NFC into its consoles. The technology itself, however, is unlikely to do anything to revive the company’s sagging fortunes.

Nintendo yesterday revised its full-year financial forecast to project a loss of 65 billion yen (US$847 million) on net sales of 660 billion yen for the year ending in March. The company had earlier forecast a loss of 20 billion yen and net sales of 790 billion yen. It made 77.7 billion yen in profit in fiscal year 2011.

Iwata attributed the projected loss to, among other things, deep discounts the company had to offer to get sales of the 3DS moving. The company also was late in introducing new game titles. And it has problems with the strong Japanese yen.

“Under these circumstances, our business performance will be the worst since we went into business in the video game industry,” he said.

Nintendo also faces stiff competition from new video game products from Sony and Microsoft and continuing, perhaps existential, threats from smartphones and other handheld devices that can play games, including cloud-based gaming.