Thursday, April 26, 2012

When Nintendo is quiet...this is what happens




Another analyst rant on how Smart Phones are killing Nintendo's business and how Nintendo might as well give up:

"They have been beaten by smartphones and tablets, in particular, for consumers spending and, more importantly, time," said David Gibson, an analyst for Macquarie in Tokyo.

Yet what Nintendo faces is a fundamental shift in gaming habits that analyst argue may require it to shrink its hardware business and instead chase profits for Super Mario and other game titles on devices built by other firms.

Its emerging foe is Apple, already the nemesis of flagging Japanese titan Sony Corp, whose seamless go-anywhere devices - the iPhoneiPad and rumoured plans for a games controller and "iTV" - are positioning it to grab swathes of the gaming market where Nintendo once held sway.



"Nintendo has to deal with the change and let Mario games be played on non-Nintendo devices," said Imazu. "I think it will take at least couple of years to see that."

Any drastic strategy shift that would dispatch the Mario brothers into the realm of Android and Apple's iOS operating system would likely require a change at the top of Nintendo, said Macquarie's Gibson. And that likely won't happen for a couple of years until the Wii U is shown to be a clear failure, he added."



Link

The problem with the above article and other recent articles, is that Nintendo does seemingly nothing and keeps quiet about all things until E3. Granted I don't need Nintendo to reassure me of anything since I know that these analyst articles are misinformed and all together wrong, but the issue is the bad perception that it paints the company in.

When Nintendo releases the Wii U later this year, they will be close to selling 100 million Wii's worldwide, the largest install base and most successful for a console in Nintendo's history. Yes, Nintendo will post an operating loss from bad decisions on pricing for the 3DS, poor planning and lack of games to sell Wii consoles and the overall hefty price of developing an efficient yet very powerful Next Generation home console. However, to think it's time for Nintendo to go ahead and join up with Apple to sell Mario on iPhone & iPad has to one of the silliest things I've heard since the last time it was suggested.

The 3DS is actually selling faster than the first DS which none of the analysts have even considered. The eShop is really taking off with many developers actually making a profit on the games they are selling on it. For them to make that oversight is very amusing to me as well. The Wii U on the other hand has not even been fully shown to the public and has not even gone on sale and it is being labeled as a failure? Keep in mind too that Nintendo has more than enough money to last them for decades of net losses like the one they will post today. Nintendo remains a very successful company that will continue to make their own path and people will continue to buy Nintendo products like they always have. It's amazing to me that Nintendo can and will keep quiet about the Wii U until E3, they must be pretty excited to finally shut the mouths of all the critics, journalists and analysts once and for all.

It takes a very patient type of person to let so many people talk bad about them without saying anything in return and for most of us it's just impossible to do for so long. How has Nintendo kept doing things like this for so many years?

Hey, it's Nintendo.....would you expect anything less?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nintendo has gone threw this cycle at the end of nes/snes/n64/gamecubes life

so please explain to me what has changed this is totally made up nonsense this exact cycle was in existence before mobile phones let alone smartphones existed

again a idiot has been brown paper bagged £££$$$$ into a fake analytical report THIS IS LIKE THE 1000S OF OTHER FAKE REPORTS DURING Wiis life time....!!!!!!!!

nintendos loss is the weak doLlar pound and euro it has nothing to do with sales...

the sales have gone down only 36% so how can 36% wipe out all profit and result in loss

IT CANNOT THERE MUST BE A REASON THE REASON IS THE DOLLAR AND THE POUND AND THE EURO VS THE YEN

IS TRASH PAPER ITS WORTHLESS THE UNITED STATES ILLUMINARTI RAN FED ARE DESTROYING THE DOLLAR

basic math end of story

Gregory Weagle said...

David Gibson is the same idiot who claimed that Activision wasn't going to support Wii U; and Konami would have little support for Wii U. All because he read the same BS article about two unnamed developers making claims that Wii U's specs couldn't hang with XBOX 360's and PS3's even though this has been soundly debunked.

Also; these soothsayers are forgetting a few facts:

[1.] Nintendo was forecasting an annual loss as early as Feburary 2012.
[2.] Nintendo's forecast the losses to be $800 million approx. The annual was released and it was down to just $533 million.
[3.] Nintendo releasing a smartphone is BS because there is already a Nintendo mobile device on the market: It's 3DS. And seriously; what is the difference between a mobile device and a handheld device? Answer: none.
[4.] DS fell very sharply because people were starting to buy 3DS's; most so during the fall and winter seasons when the big software hit. This is the same market projectacy as DS did in 2004-2006; only 3DS recovered FASTER.
[5.] 3DS only sold for a loss after it failed to sell at it's original price; and Nintendo has announced that 3DS is expected to make a profit by September which is six months ahead of expectations.
[6.] Wii's sales fell because of a couple of things: Wii U and most importantly; Nintendo screwed up by having key core software not be released because they brought into Microsoft's pigeonholing which was to call Wii a casual system.
[7.] Sony is forecasted to lose $6.4 billion. Microsoft lost $236 million in their games division, Nokia lost $1.2 billion.
[8.] Sony has lost money for four years straight. Microsoft lost money in their games division for at least six years (maybe more). This is Nintendo's first annual loss in 30 years (some say this is the first annual loss ever; but I'm not certain of that.).
[9.] Nintendo has at least $10 billion in cash alone before counting physical assets and trademarks.

Oh yeah; this is a company that is doomed and should give up and do smartphones. It's basically "Nintendo should go third party" only in a different hat.

The reason why Nintendo has gone quiet is because they are in a no win situation. If they actually went after these stupid people then everyone would call them bullies and make the claim that Nintendo's doing it because they are dead. If they go quiet then people claim that it's admitting guilt that Nintendo is dead. Heads I win; Tails you lose. And these soothsayers KNOW it; otherwise, why would they make these outrageous claims? Going quiet is the less of the two evils.

2012 is going to be interesting to say the least. The real question is not if Nintendo can bounce back; it's if SONY can stay alive without killing off most of it's divisions. Sony is the company right now that is getting destroyed now. From Samsung (TV) to Apple (music, mobile devices) to Microsoft and Nintendo (mobile devices, video games), Sony's finances in early May are going to make Nintendo's finance horror show look like a comedy.

Another day; another dollar in the echo chamber. No shock there.

Gregory Weagle said...

Anon: Actually, Nintendo I think was originally forcasting 98 million units in 3DS software sales for the fiscal and they didn't even get half of that. So yes; weak software sales were a huge factor. Thankfully; Nintendo has learned it's lesson not to overestimate such numbers and they have 3DS software at 70 million or so; which is far more obtainable in year two.

Nintendo actually benefited from a weak dollar/Euro against the Yen. I've seen it before a lot when the Canadian Dollar was near 60 cents US for a long time. Now that they are at parity to the US dollar; Canadian businesses were forced to adapt again because business were so used to the low dollar by the time the dollar started rising.

History is a fickle muse sometimes.

Unknown said...

With the recent release of Nintendo's financial report, came the release of the Wii's hardware and software numbers.

Check it out:

Wii Sports - 79.60 million units sold

Wii Sports Resort - 30.14 million

Wii Play - 28.02 million

Wii Fit - 22.67 million

Wii Fit Plus - 20.48 million

According to the editor at Wii IGN, it's bad (bad for who? Not Nintendo) that the Wii will be remembered for those games I listed. And that's why Nintendo needs to turn their backs on the brand name and the games that put the name on the map. Makes no sense.... In regards to David Gibson's comments, well he makes no sense either.

Anonymous said...

LOl. It's the calm, quiet. and confident ones you gotta watch out for...they're the badasses. Before you know it, they've handed your ass to you. Trust me, the electronic and gaming industry keep an eye on Nintendo, and then they scramble to follow Nintendo's lead.