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Cisco Eyeing Tivo/Nintendo for Buyout?
We've already covered Cisco's push into the home electronics market, but CNet is reporting that they may be planning even bigger purchases to come. The article speculates that Cisco may be planning on purchasing Tivo or Nintendo to add to their growing portfolio of companies. From the article: " Another possible acquisition candidate for Cisco is Nintendo, the No. 3 game console maker in the U.S. A stretch? Not really. Microsoft, which is emerging as a key competitor to Cisco in the home entertainment market, is already in this market with the Xbox 360. Gaming has already proved to be a strong application for broadband, so it makes sense that Cisco would want to own a game device to help drive more traffic on its network. With its popular GameBoy product, Nintendo would also provide Cisco an entree into the mobile-handheld market." Some commentary at GameDailyBiz, which finds it unlikely that Nintendo would sell to Cisco.
If Nintendo does sell to another company, they probably sell Nintendo of America rather the whole company itself. As NOA is more of a distribution arm of Nintendo rather than content creation.
TiVo is sueing Dish over "time warp" patent. Smith Barney thinks TiVo has a 70-90% chance of winning the case. Why would TiVo enter any equity agreement when it is likely to be worth much more soon after the trial ( March 2006 )?
"There's some denial about the interview after the fact now"
It's a known outright fabrication. The only source for it was a supposed issue of Wired that doesn't contain it.
A more accurate way of putting this would be:
No, here's what happened. Someone informally asked Bill Gates asked if he would buy Nintendo, given the opportunity. He said he would. Nintendo got a little upset when the press went crazy with rumors. Welcome to the video game industry where for every true rumor, there's a hundred false ones. Regardless, I do find it amazing how opinion can influence memory.
Market Capitalization-? symb=CSCO
t ory=7930
Cisco= $114 billion- http://money.cnn.com/quote/snapshot/snapshot.html
Nintendo= $18.5 billion- http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?s
I don't think Nintendo is going to buy Cisco.
Just off the top of my head, I know they own Scientific Atlanta, which is pretty much the big gun of set-top CATV boxes. They've lost a little to Motorola in the digital cable area, but they're still a major player.
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
Hmm... Except that Sega was bought out by Sammy Corporation, a Japanese company: http://www.sammy.co.jp/english/corporate/company.h tml
Uh, no.
Nintendo has reported a whopping 1 quarter in the last, like, 75 years where they didn't show a profit.
They are the market leader in handheld consoles...and have been for about 20 years. They have beaten Sega, Atari, and Sony at this game. Not to mention numerous others like the n-gage and wonderswan.
Unlike the competition, they only sell thier consoles at a profit. Sony and MS take a hit - either initially or during the entire lifepan of the system.
They aren't going anywhere.
That's ironic, considering you can actually use a Linsys WMP54G wireless card to hack your Ninendo DS.