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Weak US Dollar Means Nintendo Favors Europe For Now
timeOday writes "The LA Times is reporting that the new Nintendo Wii Fit is hard to find on US shelves, due not only to strong demand but also the United States' declining status in the world economy: '"[Nintendo] is also is shrewdly maximizing its profit by sending four times as many units to Europe, reaping the benefits of the strong euro," says Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. "The shortage demonstrates one consequence of the weak dollar. We're seeing companies ignore their largest market simply because they can make a greater profit elsewhere."'"
I hate how Europe always gets shafted, especially when it comes to gaming.
Rarely do we ever get a title released here first, even titles that were developed here tend to get released in the USA first.
What's more, Nintendo, Sony AND Microsoft have all indicated that they don't care for Europe.
Sony is probably the worst offender, by giving us a stripped down PS3 at nearly twice the price as the US and Japan (There's only so much "tax" and "import costs" can account for).
Rock band is actually cheaper to import from the US than it is to buy in the shops (it's almost twice the price when you buy the set and the game!). This is really nothing new, but it's still infuriating the way we get treated.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Turns out Europe overtook the US gaming market for FY2007.
I hate hearing the whining of the article repeated elsewhere: "We're seeing companies ignore their largest market simply because they can make a greater profit elsewhere." That link I just posted says Japan is #1 in sales at $11.5 B USD, Europe is #2 at $11.4 B USD and US only pulled in $10.7 B USD. So companies aren't ignoring their largest market; they're giving the leftovers to the third largest market. Deal.
Cynicism is no substitute for insight: http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
This depends on what country you're in, here in Sweden most people speak english well enough that until recently few games were translated to swedish, to this day many of the big titles (guitar hero, gta series, WoW and lots of others IIRC) are not available in swedish versions, yet we have to wait until the release of the versions of games translated to german and french before they're released, in english, here.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Well, the data I have is from 2006 and I'm too lazy to look up newer data.
I wonder if this has anything to do with Bush running up trillions in debt and making everyone hate us?
Well look at it this way.
The government is the only entity that can effectively control the amount of currency in circulation. It is the only entity that can create and destroy money by fiat; it can print currency, it can create funds to lend to central banks, and it can destroy the money it created.
The government takes money from you every year in April. Someone has to repair roads, pick up garbage, provide for the common defense etc. Asphalt, garbage trucks, and missiles cost money. The government prints this money and spends it. It's all OK because it picks your pocket, pulls out dollars, and destroys them to account for it. And you shouldn't complain because you get to drive on nice roads with no garbage or foreigners.
What if they didn't take your money? That's what George W. Bush did. He figured you'd like him more if we skipped the part where the money comes out of your pocket and gets burned up in order to close the books on the services you receive from the government. So the money escaped your pocket (or at least your $300 consolation prize did), and suddenly all this money that had been spent paving the roads and collecting garbage was suddenly appearing at Wal*Mart for its second life, and it got spent a second time to buy more garbage, predominantly imported crap from overseas. Basically the government printed crap dollars, we spent them on imports, giving sellers overseas dollars that they promptly exchange for their own currencies. The currency exchange markets are quickly overwhelmed by dollars. These quickly end up parked in immense T-Bills held by foreign banks, who would like to unload them but cannot risk damaging their value by flooding the dollar markets with their own holdings. But the value of the dollar is deteriorating anyway, much to everyone's dismay- because dollars are the most widely held currency in the world. And we owe them to everybody. You see how awkward this is.
Let's say now you're sitting on a loading dock with 500 Nintendos on pallets. Do you want to turn them into dollars? Heh heh heh heh heh.
But the invisible hand has a way to correct everything. Maybe someday we can make our own Nintendos.
I am sorry, but I am familiar with IP laws in most of the rest of the developed world. I have 12 patents in my name that have been issued in multiple countries. Japan is actually more lenient in granting patents than the US. The EU is a little more strict but not much. In other areas (copyright) most countries have either a 50 year or 70 year post-mortem copyright period. The US is not at all unusual with it's 70 year period.
Yes China's situation is a bit different as a developing nation but it is rapidly becoming normalized with the rest of the world as they are starting to develop their own "imaginary property". They are now a member of WIPO, the Paris convention, the Madrid Agreement and have a State Patent and Trademarks office. While enforcement is spotty the trend is obvious.
Any claim that the US economy isat a disadvantage due to IP laws is hooey.
UK = England + Wales + Scotland + Northern Ireland
GB = Old fashioned term for England + Wales + Scotland
England = England
Commonwealth = lots of former colonies + UK
So you'd generally be safe using the UK where you would normally say 'England'.
I second that motion. In Europe, the Governmental banks had to intervene in order to keep the same crisis from hitting the EU. Slowly but surely, the US mantra of "the market will fix anything" is eroding. It just goes to show that you need a fair bit of regulation in the financial sector (as in any sector) because the market will ultimately fall victim to stupid greed and short term thinking.
The funny thing is that TFA also mentions an interesting tidbit which is preposterous:
"We're seeing companies ignore their largest market simply because they can make a greater profit elsewhere"
Now I've worked for HP for the past twelve years. I assume everyone knows that HP is from Palo Alto originally, and a very, very solid American company. Now since 1996 already the EMEA region has been responsible for 42% or more of the total HP revenue in the world, followed by The Americas and then APJ. Since China and India are ramping up economically, it wouldn't surprise me if the US is now competing for that second spot with the APJ region.
This notion is not just something that lives inside of large corporations like HP, but can easily be verified on Da Innerweb. If you add up the Gross National Product of member-state countries of the EU from numbers you find on CIA World Factbook, or if you simply look at wikis or reports on this, you will see that the EU has a GDP that is 15% higher than the US. Now since the US are ~300 million and the EU are ~400 million people, the GDP per capita is still a bit lower than the US', but this is also due to the fact that the newer member states such as Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia are all former Warsaw Pact members who still have a bit of growing to de economically.
To cut a long story short, in 2006 the EU was already putting more value out there than the US. And the decreasing value of the Dollar might be good for the US' export position, but the bottom line is that the US are no longer the biggest market on the planet. It hasn't been. For years.