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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."
Games have been trickling out since most of the game producers are of the wait-and-see variety.
b lishers-shift-from-sony-to-nintendo-271785.php
The Wii's success was soon evident to everyone though and most of the large game makers jumped on the bandwageon. However since games aren't produced in an instant, you'll see an avalanche of games released for the Wii, starting late '07, but mostly throughout, and towards the end of, '08.
News is surfacing that some companies are shifting focus from Sony to Nintendo entirely:
http://kotaku.com/gaming/the-tide/big-japanese-pu
My guess is that this'll keep happening unless/until the PS3 somehow manages to pick it sales up significantly and reach some form of critical mass.
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.