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Nintendo Announces Net Loss, New Prices
Daetrin writes "As reported by CNN/Reuters, Nintendo announced that they expect a net loss for the first half of the financial year, from April through September. Nintendo claims this is mainly due to exchange rates, as the yen has appreciated against foreign currencies during that period. This is reported as the first loss for Nintendo since its establishment. The projection for the full fiscal year was reduced to a [still significant] net profit of about $542 million U.S. Nintendo also announced further price cuts in other territories to follow the cut to $99 in the U.S.: 'Beginning on October 10, the console will have a suggested retail price of 79 pounds (approximately $131.8 U.S.) in Britain, and 99 euros (approximately $115.4 U.S.) in continental Europe. The new price of the GameCube in Japan is now 14,000 yen (approximately $126.5 U.S.)'"
Nintendo just dropped the price of the GC. Now sales have gone up significantly. And with the sales of the consoles are sales of games. I'll bet that Nintendo will be back in the black real soon.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
Nintendo will be back in the black
They hit the sack. It has been too long; they are glad to be back. Yes, they are dead loose from the noose that has kept them hanging around. They are just living on the side because it is getting them high. Forget the hearse because they never die. They have nine lives (cat's eyes). Each and every one of them is wondering why. Because they are back.
Its too bad that stories like this keep getting posted about Nintendo. In this case the losses come from the depreciation of the yen against the dollar, but I'm sure that some people will just glance at the story and assume that Nintendo is hurting financially. I hope that this bad press doesn't discourage anyone from getting a gamecube right now, its a great machine at a great price :)
In linux libertas
- The currency exchange rate changes, like Nintendo says
- This last six months has been a very dry spell for Nintendo games. There were some itermittant cool things for GC (Mega Man!) and a handful of GBA masterpieces (Wario Ware, Castlevania AOS), but by and large after Wind Waker there wasn't a lot of activity on the new Nintendo games front until September. September marked the beginning of a huge three-month wave of really really good Nintendo titles, but still. Has this affected Nintendo's sales?
- There have been vague rumors of Nintendo announcing the GC2 and/or GBA2 at the next E3. Could some of their potential profit have been eaten up by the development costs for that over the last six months?
If Nintendo really lost money because of the Yen thing, then we should be able to go back, look up the changes in Yen over the last six months, and determine exactly how much money Nintendo would have made if not for the Yen thing and see if it would have been a profit, right?Because they are back.
But an important thing to keep in mind is that they are back once again with the renegade master. Deep thought damager, power to the people. Back once again with the renegade master.
Deep thought damager with the ill behavior. Back with the equal. Power to the equal.
The importance of this cannot be underestimated.
I think it's fairly important not to forget that Nintendo is the only company in the console manufacturing business whose only business is consoles (including handhelds). Nintendo doesn't have a line of electronic devices or movies or operating system to fall back on. We'll never really hear if the Xbox or PS2 divisions of Sony and MS are losing money because those are largely internal divisions, whereas if Nintendo is losing money it's solely because of poor console/software sales.
It *is* notable that it's the first time Nintendo has posted a loss, but I think that this may be slightly representative of the gaming market at large. We're on the downhill from here to 2005 in the sense that the market is no longer hard-core first adopters but largely families or potential multiple console owners.
The good news is that Nintendo will probably just keep on being Nintendo. That means we'll continue to see one or two extremely high quality Gamecube games until and perhaps even into the next console lifespan. The bad news is that, well, Nintendo will just keep on being Nintendo. That means that if there's one of the three companies feeling a bit like a third wheel, it's Nintendo. What with the PSP on the horizon that may potentially do to the portable market what the PSX did to home console market,
I think Nintendo's in a rough spot here. They're stubborn bastards though, and I don't think they'll go down without a fight, nintendo-style. The problem is that while Nintendo-style is good for those of us here and the serious gaming community, I don't think it's a viable strategy for the post-PSX/GTA market (regretably).
With Microsoft jumping into the market with XBOX, you can expect Nintendo to be hurting. Nintendo has always stood for quality, adn often "better" systems. The N64 clearly surpassed PSX and Saturn. However, Nintendo didn't have the resources to compete technologically with someone like Microsoft, who was willing to take a huge dive on this console. However, Nintendo still has a lot of things going for it. Besides the obvious name recognition and willingness to drop prices often, Nintendo has over a decade of classic games and franchises from which it can exploit. Zelda, Kirby, MegaMan, Mario, Castlevania, and Metroid are just a few of the classics that Nintendo owns. In recent years the number of new classics has decreased, but there still are games like Pokemon, Super Smash Bros., and Mario Party. Eventually, Nintendo may end up like Sega, without their own console, but with enough clout and game franchises to still do very well. Besides, in this economy and given how badly the other systems seem to be generating revenue, I don't think Nintendo has too much to worry about yet.
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For UK/Europe pricing?
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The X-Box has yet to turn a profit for the Home & Entertainment division at Microsoft. -2.3 billion in video games.
Are you insinuating that you are not yourself a fanboy, of the pro-Nokia, pro-Microsoft, anti-Nintendo type? Your posting history shows that you are a troll who attracts other trolls.
I don't know why you you still have positive karma.
You are incorrect, they do not use Euros in the UK. They still use Pounds there.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
ya, I got curious after I posted and went to Europa and found out for myself.
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There are two reasons i submited this article. First, if a Nintendo anti-fanboy noticed the report and submited it first, they would have done their best to play up the negative side as much as possible, such as you do with every report about Nintendo, good or bad. (Note how eager you are to post in response to this article, but remained strangely quiet about the quadrupled sales of the GameCube.)
I thought it was better to have the article submited by a (more) neutral party who would actually present the whole story. Nintendo is facing a likely loss for the first half. That loss is partly due to poor sales, and partly due to the currency market. Nintendo is projecting lowered profit expectations for the full year, but is still expecting a pretty significant profit. And finally they're implementing a new price point in many countries, the similar cut in the US having already caused a huge surge in console sales here.
Second of all, unlike you fanboys and anti-fanboys, i'm interested in finding out the facts without concern for whether or not they fit a pre-conceived notion of what i want the facts to be. This is interesting news, whether or not i like what it means (and what it means is open for debate of course.) How many times have you posted anything about Nintendo doing well? Or have you only sought out information that supports your own view that Nintendo is doomed?
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I still say that if any console released an SDK, they would beat the others overnight. They'd lose all their income from licensing fees, but their console sales would be through the roof with all the games that would be popping up, and games really do make the system.
"TOLD YOU SO. Alright y'all, fanboy up! "
That might bother the fan boys if you had read the article and still felt good about saying that.
"Derp de derp."
Dear vtechpilot,
You are a fool.
Love Mr. Limey
as if nintendo is the only company based in japan.
what the fuck is sony then?
if any console released an SDK, they would beat the others overnight.
That would be PS2 and GBA, the top two non-PC game systems in the States. The PS2 console has Linux for PlayStation 2, and the GBA handheld has the unofficial DevKit Advance and a community around it. So the systems with publicly available development tools have the biggest market share, even if the relationship isn't exactly causal.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is the first loss Nintendo has posted since it started making video games or in its entire 100-plus year history?
If they'd release Final Fantasy: CC faster.. they could recoup any losses :)
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