Slashdot Mirror
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."
and do it WELL. Just seems to me to be a better business model than to try to do everything and not be able to focus on anything.
Course, I'm a Ninty fanboy, so I'm slightly biased...
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.
I read the internet for the articles.
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.
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.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
If you are a corporate execute at Sony's console division:
1. Buy Nintendo stock
2. Open your mouth
3. Profit!
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
A) Sorry, with a P/E of 31 (in times of plenty), this is a good example of an overinflated stock with unsustainable growth. (Sony's P/E is also high at 54 since investors are betting the PS3 will take off at some point -- I think they're right, but I still don't think it's a good buy.)
B) If Nintendo doesn't either start putting out some quality titles, or convincing third parties to do it for them, the Wii excitement will quickly turn to Wiimorse. I really *want* to like this console, but I haven't found a game yet that holds my attention, or my son's, with the exception of Paper Mario, and the caveat that it was too difficult for him, and too easy/tedious for anyone with a little Mario experience under their belt. And why it doesn't support either the "classic controller" (when holding the Wiimote sideways is anything but ergonomic) or motion sensing (when that's the main selling point of the console) is beyond me. Anyway, yeah. More and better games -- and soon!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
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.
Dude, temper. I don't know where you were, but the demise of Nintendo was considered an inevitability almost the day after the Gamecube came out. Not because it sold horribly, but because all the video games happenings were on other systems. Few games, especially the interesting ones, came out on Gamecube. It seemed to guarantee that Nintendo wasn't going to do what it had to to retake the lead after the N64 sucked so hard. I certainly expected Nintendo to be gone by the next gen.
Property is theft.
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.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I distinctly remember people talking about Nintendo following the Sega model and refocusing only on games. These people were not necessarily informed, but discussion did happen on a semi-regular basis across interested forums. I believe it peaked around the PSP's launch.
At the time the DS was moving slowly, and the PSP's launch was impressive. The "Revolution" was a long ways off, and its features pure speculation. Given they were last in the console market (by market share) and the PSP looked set to steal the handheld market at that time, threads hailing or lamenting the demise of Nintendo as a hardware company were not uncommon. Despite the Gamecube making pure profit, it was hard to imagine that Nintendo could continue making consoles if their market kept shrinking.
People also talked about the Xbox "vastly" outselling the Gamecube. Why? Fanboys of the time would cite specific regions, months, etc. to slant the facts. Just because it was wrong doesn't mean it wasn't spoken.
As a last note, the Gamecube and N64 profits were significant even if they may have been less than the Gameboy Advance (I'm not going to commit either way without numbers). Assuming a mere $1 profit was made on each console sold, that's $50 million in hardware sales. That's distributed over 10 years, but we're making about the harshest assumption possible about systems that were never sold at loss during their time; We're also ignoring software sales, accessories and licensing fees.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
I agree, that is why I have a Wii and a PC. When I want to game, and not waste my life tuning settings, I play Wii. When I want the best graphics possible I use my PC. The Xbox and the PS3 both feel like PC's I'm not allowed to tune to my liking, and for that I would only buy them if they had some GREAT games for them, which eventually they will, but as you said, nothing is grabbing me now so I play Resident Evil 4 on the Wii and am more pleased with it than everything but God of War II.