Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo Profits Up Amid GameCube Worries
Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for their report on Nintendo's announcement of significant first-quarter profits, around $95 million (11.5bn Yen), "buoyed by stellar Game Boy Advance console sales, foreign exchange rate gains in Europe and the well timed re-emergence of the Pokemon brand." However, the article cautions that GameCube's current prospects are "...looking increasingly bleak, with a mere 800,000 units of the underperforming console selling through from April to June. Targets of six million have been set for the end of its financial year, but it's looking unlikely that it will reach this unless it's prepared to heavily discount the console in the run up to Christmas - something Nintendo has traditionally been reluctant to do." What can Nintendo do to get out of this hardware slump? Update: 08/05 20:43 GMT by S : According to this Reuters report, Nintendo sold just 80,000 GameCubes to retailers worldwide, not 800,000.
But thats not going to happen, be realistic.
I am sorry, but 800,000 isnt a small number. Each household will only have a demand for a single gamecube, no matter what price you put on it. AFAIK, there is only one game for the GC that uses the internet: Phantasy Star Online. Given that, the lack of broadband adapters being a common accessory, and the fact that I can't expand on it and run Linux or similar, and the limited selection of games, all point to a certain saturation of the market that we appear to be reaching.
Xbox and PS2 can break the limit of 1 per household because they can run Linux (ie become a family or personal PC) and because they have networked games.
(all this comes with the disclaimer that I own a GC, that I bought way back when it was still new)
This
End result? The company is on the rocks, the employees get griped at and have hours cut, and the people responsible (game makers for not making games that move systems and retailers for building up unreasonable hype) scratch their heads.
"Infants flesh will be in season throughout the year." -Swift
The idea that somehow the GC is far in third-place, is frankly strage.
It is, but the reason is media hype. The media has latched onto Sony and Microsoft. They are the new cool guys. Nintendo was cool when Atari ruled the roost. Then Sega was the media darling in the 16-bit days. Sony took over with the PSX. And now Microsoft, for some reason, can do no wrong in the media eyes. They lose money like it's urine and the media says they are in better shape than Nintendo.
Nintendo is turning the most profit, sitting almost dead even with Microsoft in terms of hardware sales, and everyone (the media) predicts their failure.
Frankly, it's strange.
If I had something intelligent to say, I would have said it.
The whole reason Nintendo is having such a hard time garnering 3rd party support is because all of it is either going to Xbox or PS2, because they feel that a vast majority of the games they are developing won't have a place on GC, which is a 'kiddy console'. IMO, that is a bunch of crap, because im certainly no kid, im 23, and own a GC. As far as whether or not some of the more risque games could do well on the GC, there's no way they could without being there, and its quite apparent that they can seeing as how well the ResEvil franchise has done, as well as Eternal Darkness.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
I'm not sure they really need to do anything.
Is the gamecube slumping? Yes, but it isn't Nintendos cash cow right now anyway, the gameboy is. Most of the people crying for nintendo to improve the gamecube position are analysts outside the company. Sure more profit is always good but nintendo is hardly in any sort of danger right now. No big projects forth coming? Nintendo can be notoriously tight lipped at times, look at the Gameboy advanced SP, no info on it even leaked much earlier than a month before launch. They could be hiding a couple aces, and its not like MS or Sony have killer aps slated for this year either.
The big picture could change though. Sony's Portable is going to give a serious challenge for the mature gamers (18+) but its cost is going to be too high to capture the younger gamers at first. Nintendo is leaning very heavy on that portable leg and if it gets kicked out from under them they are going to be headed down the road Sega just recently hopped along if they don't get their claws into something else. Its hard to say though if this could happen over night. Sony venturing into the portable market is very similar to the launch of the game cube: a superior (in most respects) console against the entrenched behemoth.
Also keep this in mind: Sony's profits were very low last quarter, while their console is doing well, the company as a whole did not perform as well as Sony would have liked. Neither Nintendo or MS is so far behind that they couldn't rise up and close the gap quickly. If the market fragments with the next generation, Sony is the one with the most to lose, to go from 80% to 33% is a huge loss while virtualy any outcome would be better for Nintendo and MS since they together control only about 20-30%
I stop rambling now...
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Nintendo's profits up. Still selling lot's of the Cube, Sony's profits down 98%, MS cuts staff in Japan, but they just have to point out Nintendo's loss? What IS IT with people to overlook everyone else and just laugh at Nintendo, making wads of cash I would love to make, unlike MS losing every day and Sony in a huge moneypit.
I don't know why that is, maybe they want to see the "big guy" fail and the underdog come out on top, although no one who's been paying attention at all would think Nintendo has been the "big guy" since the SNES days, and they'd have to be insane to think of Microsoft as the underdog even if they've only just now entered the console biz.
Regardless of how this fucked up perception came about, no amount of pointing out the strengths of the GameCube, real or imagined, and no amount of pointing out the inequality of the treatment will change anything.
A lot of the population is influenced by the media. If this goes on for long enough, people will buy into the idea that the GameCube is toast and sales will go down, and then the media will have something real to hang their predjudices on.
The only way Nintendo can beat this bad rap is to turn things around and do so well that no one can deny that they're beating the XBox. Until they can do that they will always be a failure in the media's eyes.
They need a price cut before christmas, i don't care if they've been reluctant to do that in the past, they need to get over that. Being priced the same as the competition only works if you're percieved as well or better than them. The GameCube price should be $100. As someone else pointed out the $150 with a free game works out to the same value, but Nintendo needs to rub people's faces in it. They can also have the $150 with game version include a $25 mail in rebate. As people on slashdot have complained before, those things are a ripoff, but they do help sales, and at not much cost to the bottom line.
Nintendo needs to beg, borrow, or buy more 3rd party developers. They need to improve their reputation and relations with outside coompanies and get more games on the system.
They need to get more mature games on the system and kick the kiddy image. I know, sex and violence does not make a good game, but it does affect sales. Miyamoto doesn't have to make the games himself, Ninetndo can get 3rd parties to make them, but the games need to get made.
They damn well better be working on the GameCube2 or whatever it's called! It needs to be backwards compatible, and it can't have the usually Nintendo slippage. If they can beat the PS3 and XBox2 to market by a few weeks (this is critical, if they release it too far ahead, Sony and Microsoft will go the "wait a bit longer for better technology" spiel) and have a ton of GameCube games that work on it, they could pull off some major sales and get a head start in the next round.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank