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Nintendo Quarterly Profits Down 80%
mybrainonfire writes "1UP is reporting that Nintendo had a 78.5% reduction in operating profits for the quarter. 'Speculation from the news service on the reason for the drop makes perfect sense - the GameCube doesn't have enough exclusives, first-party and third-party, and sales of GBA SP and GameCube have been declining.' Time to release more Pokemon games, stat!"
Perhaps it would be appropriate for someone to point out that Sony and Microsoft's gaming divisions have both reported net losses this quarter. Nintendo still profited, just not as much as it expected, and they remain more profitable overall than any other gaming division. Of course, you'll never see that in any gaming publication. It's all about how Nintendo is constantly doomed. Yeah right.
But far be it from anyone in the word of investor driven "growth at any cost" to acknowledge that fact.
They're still in the black, they're still making a profit, they're not going out of business.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Nintendo is not a division of an extremely successful multinational corporation: it is a multinational corporation. There is nothing to support it if it fails to show a profit.
You're right, Norfair.
The only reason I bought an X-Box was because I knew I could pirate games. I mean, I've downloaded 30 or 40 of those suckers now...
I can't say I've actually bought an X-Box title yet... Maybe one day. I mean, at $150 Microsoft made a huge profit off of the sale of the system. Right?
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
I never realized Nintendo games were geared towards any particular age range. They are kid-friendly, but hell if I don't find the games just as fun as I did when I was 6. When do you become too 'mature' for Super Mario Brothers, exactly? To me, Mario Party is just so much funner than 'yet another multiplayer frag fest', but I guess that's probably because I feel more thought was put into making the game fun. (They couldn't just give you a choice of 6-10 weapons and have you run around and shoot people.)
Whenever I hear this criticism about "more mature games", it seems more a request for Nintendo to play to gamers' insecurities than anything. When I play a Mario, or Zelda, etc. game, I don't think "geez, Nintendo's treating me like a kid! Where's something that plays to my need for raw violence, bloodletting and gritty realism?" I think - gee, the gameplays really good, the game is huge, and all the best parts aren't cut-scenes. (Unlike most other games out there.) But apparently many gamers don't agree. Games have to be complicated, be badass and 'realistic', or be like movies, to be playable. Not to worry, Sony and Microsoft have got those folks covered. FPSs and sports (i.e. racing) games are flooding those platforms.
Personally, I don't see this as cause for alarm. When Nintendo's in the red, and the other two vendors are making gobs of cash (at least up until recently, MS was bleeding cash on XBox) then let me know. But hey, I'm a Mac user and so I'm quite used to people predicting the imminent death of a profitable company. :)
Stern Electronics is probably the best example I could give to refute those who think profitability is so bad.
Stern are the only remaining pinball manufacturers in the world. Midway/Williams, Gottlieb, Sega, Atari, you name it - all gone.
How did Stern survive? Well, they never were into the glitsy uber-electronic versions of pinball that Midway and Sega were killing themselves over. They simply did a simple thing: made FUN pinballs modestly.
Eventually, their competitors priced themselves out of the market or found more profitable venues (Midway's arcade division produces gambling machines). With Sony and Microsoft not even close to breaking even after all this time, you know the next generation will be even worse for them. The PS3 is practically a supercomputer in console form, and the 360 will be more powerful than just about any PC you can put together.
The ultimate question is: will they EVER turn a profit? I don't believe they will and in the meantime, Nintendo may experience a loss in sales to older, more demanding gamers, but they will continue to sail on through and IN THE BLACK.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
So there, now I've said it, I enjoyed them all, where's the problem? Do I get a prize?
Now, the PS* may have cooler games, but Nintendo is far more superior in making fun toys to play with.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
I have owned most the consoles over the past 20 years, so not a fanboy of anyone in particular. But I have had more fun gaming in my past 4 months of GC and 6 months of GBA owning than I have done in the past 3 years of PS2 owning. Its not the quantity of games, it really is the quality, and I think this is where Nintendo excel.
We are not 6 years old any more nintendo!!! And 6 year olds do not have money, 24 year olds have money
No, 24 year olds don't have money. 30-50 year olds have money. And we decide which games our 6 year olds buy. We get the ones that are fun and age appropriate. And Pokemon rules.
More expansive article here If you read the article, it tells you "80% decline," but that's a lie. If you actually do the math, a 3.75 billion yen decline to 13.72 billion yen of operating profit is obviously not an 80% decline, and in fact what actually happened is a decline TO 80%. Likewise, they had a 14% drop in sales, netting 70.7 billion yen.
Now, let's look at Sony and Microsoft's numbers (linked article last paragraph). Microsoft lost more money than Nintendo made in profit. Sony lost about a third as much as Microsoft, but they're still in the red! Where's the front page "Sony's losing money! So's Microsoft!" articles?!
Good lord, no wonder why everyone thinks Nintendo's doomed: the media has it out for them! Why didn't they report on Sony or Microsoft's losses, let alone why didn't they check their numbers/headline/article before posting it?! Seriously, Nintendo has an uphill battle next generation, and it's mostly because the media puts them in a bad light like this.
Um yeah, that's a great business model:
1) Sell console at a loss or very little profit.
2) Sell games at absurd profit to make up for console.
3) Make games easy to pirate to encourage people to buy your console.
4) High price of games and easy copy-ability drives everyone to not buy your games.
5) ???
6) Certainly not profit.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
On of my family members recently got rid of their X-Box and switched to Nintendo for the very reasons you are citing. She grew up with a bunch of different game systems, but ultimately ended with a Super Nintendo and she was hooked.
Flash forward a few years and she and her husband purchased a new X-Box. They didn't end up playing it much. They found many of the games were just too complex to play casually. They wanted to be able to pop in a game and play for a few hours without having to go through boot camp.
The GameCube ended up being the perfect system. It had updated versions of many of the games they liked from old Nintendo systems (F-Zero, Metroid, Mario Kart), they are pretty easy to learn, and they had more options for playing games together. They weren't really into multiplayer FPS, but they would race each other in Mario Kart any day.
Just a little empirical evidence to support your point. As video gaming becomes more popular, more niches are going to open up; Nintendo is probably smart to stick with the family space. Heck, even hardcore gamers like to play games like Lumines every now and then. Personally, I wish Katamari Damacy was on the GC.
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