Nintendo's Market Value Briefly Tops Sony's

GameDaily reports on news from Reuters; today for the first time Nintendo outpaced Sony's market value. Note that this isn't Sony's games wing, but the entirety of the Sony corporation. Investor confidence spurred by brisk sales of the DS and Wii pushed Nintendo (briefly) into the top ten earners in the nation of Japan, with such rarefied organizations as Honda, Toyota, and Canon. "Nintendo's shares rose to a record high 46,350 yen in the morning, increasing its overall market value to 6.57 trillion yen ($53 billion), which allowed it to surpass Sony's market capitalization for a time. The company's shares, however, finished the day a bit lower putting Nintendo back in 11th place behind Sony, but still ahead of Panasonic maker Matsushita, whose sales are over eight times larger than Nintendo's. Nintendo's market value closed at 6.39 trillion yen on Monday, just below Sony's 6.48 trillion yen."

Comments

Time to short?

[jandrese]

Sounds to me like Nintendo might be a bit overvalued. The Wii is great, but the games have just been trickling out for it and people are going to lose some of their enthusiasm for the system before too long. I'm not an investor, but I can't see how they can maintain that sort of overinflated valuation for too long.

Re:Time to short?

[Altus]

yes, games have been few and far between for the Wii, but the console has sold like hotcakes. This implies that games will be released for it in the future.

A lot of game development companies bet against the Wii and that was a poor bet for them to make. I'm sure many of them would like to go back and release on the Wii just to get a crack at the installed base. I doubt they will make the same mistake now that the Wii is on the market and outselling the other consoles.

That said, Nintendo is probably close to the peak of its value and would not make a fantastic investment right now. Even if the console continues to sell well and the new games come out and Nintendo is fantastically successful, how much higher can the stock reasonably go?

Re:Time to short?

[Anonymous Coward]

"how much higher can the stock reasonably go?"

no need for reason. this is the stockmarket, after all.

Re:Time to short?

[suv4x4]

Sounds to me like Nintendo might be a bit overvalued. The Wii is great, but the games have just been trickling out for it and people are going to lose some of their enthusiasm for the system before too long. I'm not an investor, but I can't see how they can maintain that sort of overinflated valuation for too long.

The funny thing is, they've survived thus far on classics such as mario, zelda and so on. Why would you think they suddenly need a river of games to keep gamers interested.

It's not about quantity here. PS3 is rolling out 380 games by end of next year (they say). How many of those will really matter.

That said, with the number of sales going into the Wii right now, I can see this sparkling some newfound interest in the platofrm in the biggest companies in the market (such as EA).

Now of course, I agree Nintendo is overvalued right now. Somewhat. But I think Wii will do just fine at the same time.

Re:Time to short?

[eln]

Hi,

My kids play the Wii constantly. I play it when I get the time to. There, now you've heard from a Wii owner whose system isn't gathering dust.

If you are the kind of person who is out buying 1080p TV sets when they still cost as much as they do, then you're probably also the kind of person who will spend $600 on a game console so you can have the most powerful system on the market. If that's you, then go buy a PS3. Technophiles are not the target market for the Wii.

If you didn't like any of Nintendo's previous offerings, why would you think you would like the Wii? Did you just get one because everyone else was, and you wanted to be part of the crowd? Or did you pretend to get one just so you could troll Slashdot?

I agree with you that Nintendo's stock will fall (although probably not plummet), but not for the reasons you state.

Re:So?

[sssssss27]

I think it more or less just puts into perspective how well Nintendo is doing and how poorly Sony is doing. People aren't going to invest in a company that they don't have faith in.

Wiis Still Selling As Fast As They Make 'Em

[miller60]

Here in NJ there are still console shoppers staking local game stores for new arrivals of the Wii. I was just at a local gaming store, and in the 10 minutes I was there, two shoppers came in and asked "if they had any in yet." No such luck. No inventory shortages for the PS3, tho.

Wiimorse? I don't think so. Wii wins hands down

[Drake42]

I'm not employed by any game company. If I had any financial motivation it would be toward MS winning since I can code games on their console using their open dev tools.

That said, the Wii kicks and continues to kick everyone else's ass. Last night after playing so much golden axe and boxing that I couldn't stand it any more I decided "Hey I want to see some better graphics" I loaded up my 360, looked at the games I had available and none of them sounded all that appealing. I tried "Small Arms" and it just didn't look so amazing that it was more fun to play. Same with PocketBike. Considered loading up Dead Rising but didn't want to invest the time. Nothing else grabbed me so I went right back to the Wii for a few more rounds of tennis and went to bed.

Like it or Hate it, the Wii has more staying power than any of the other consoles, graphics or not. You can say that Nintendo stock is over priced if you want, but people said that about google for ages and then their stock price rose anyway.

People are fundamentally fed up with products that don't work / don't do what they claim / are so over-hyped that I have to tune them out just to think. The people of the world want simple services that actually and reliably work. Google and Nintendo are delivering that and so the market is rewarding them and will continue to do so for quite some time. I'm betting that I'll have a lot more fun playing Smash Brothers with my friends than playing Halo with whiny ass, vomit talking, on-line clans.

I love my 360. And someday I'll buy a (lower cost) PS3 just for the eye candy. But when I want to play a game, I keep on going back to the Wii even after having it for quite a while.

Re:Great news

[AuMatar]

Actually, its 90% idiots and fanboys. You make your money by predicting how the idiots and fanboys will react.

In this case it wasn't fanboyism. I saw one company about to go out on a limb with an innovative new product. I saw another company about to go out with an overpriced product that didn't provide much more than their last generation. I saw a lot of buzz among the gaming community about the innovative new product. I decided I had room in my portfolio for some risk, took it, and made a decent chunk of change.