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.

Comments

Underperforming Console?

[MajikMan]

I work in a fairly large game retailer (Gamestop), and I'm curious to know who's standards the cube and xbox are underperforming by. I know in my company, the investors were told a story about last year's sales and expect to see the same kind of numbers. The problem with that is that there hasn't been a major price cut, and there aren't any new system-selling titles on the shelves.

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.

Re:Nintendo needs developers!

[YomikoReadman]

So what you're saying is that Nintendo, which actually gives away dev kits, fails to support their 3rd party developers the way Sony does, when they actually charge an arm and a leg? The only factual statement in their is that M$ not only gave away devkits, but paid for a huge chunk of development costs.

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.

All aboard, the sinking ship is leaving

[August_zero]

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...

Wait....

[M3wThr33]

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.