What i am thinking is that the age of gamers is going up & the average age is around thirty, now many people in this age range have money to spend, they have been brought up with games & gaming, the games these ages play are more adult orientated, CoD, FIFA & GTA etc, now these mostly come out on platforms that are not Nintendo PS3/PS4 - X360-X1 these consoles also have more lets say child friendly games, so instead of buying a new Nintendo console these parents will buy Little Big Planet or Sonic Kart etc, everyone keeps saying that Nintendo will always have the kid market, but will they ?
The Death Of Nintendo Has Been Greatly Under-Exaggerated
- Thread starter Tripon
- Start date
This keeps being repeated over and over in this forum, but the console moved 880 million pieces of software on 100 million consoles.
The PS3 has moved 750 million pieces of software on 78 million consoles.
There is less than 1 game of difference between the 2 consoles in terms of attach rate. Does that mean everyone's PS3s are gathering dust in the collective worldwide closets?
What the analogy shows is that cash on hand is ultimately meaningless if you're going to continue to produce failed products while the market around you is changing rapidly while you are failing to adapt.
Ninja Scooter
Member
What is doomed? That's the big problem here is that doomed could mean anything. Saying "the numbers are bad but not doomed" doesn't really refute anything. Doomed can mean Nintendo ceasing to exist. Doomed can mean them getting out of consoles. Doomed can mean them having to completely reshuffle their business strategy.
Steve Youngblood
Member
Eh, I don't think it's really all that controversial to assert that Nintendo is in somewhat of a rough spot right now. However, it's going to be difficult to salvage a good discussion as to what that article gets right/wrong when it's written in such an inflammatory fashion.
Not just those, I also listed the most important ones which you missed - the first party exclusives including Donkey Kong, Super Mario 3D World and Wii Fit U.
As for the hardware sales figures I don't have any to hand but Pikmin 3 definitely showed an increase in sales in all territories, at least for a couple of weeks. And they've got at least one first party title being released every month before the end of the year.
Feel free to mock me if it doesn't happen but I was very confident of this happening even before the price cut. Sales of 3-4m over the Christmas period really isn't a stretch for a console, particularly when that Christmas period includes Black Friday in the States.
I was being sarcastic, they haven't conceded at all just because they're making cheaper version, just like Nintendo hasn't because they release a 2DS
Well the article's title says "the death of Nintendo", I'd say it means them going out of business.
But that's how it's always been on Nintendo home systems. Even the wildly successful Nintendo handhelds are often privy to the same fate. With the huge amount of Wii units out in the wild 3rd parties still struggled. It's not good. It's not healthy. Nintendo should try to change this but that alone won't be the downfall of the Wii U.
This upcoming gen isn't too different from the last or any other really. In fact I'd say Nintendo are in a more fortunate place this time around. With the PS4 being the fan favourite and being pretty cheap relatively speaking, people would be more able to pick the Wii U up as a secondary system down the line.
For many even the wildly popular and enticing Wii was a secondary system even with the PS3/360 being really expensive for a majority of the generation. I don't see it changing for many people...at least this time around.
Now that I think about it. Nintendo making a cheap 2ds would go great in China.
PlumCantaloupe
Member
Redcrayon gets it. It is a hard lesson to finally learn you can't please everyone; and it is both a bane and an uppoint that so many people are so passionate about how a video game business is run.
Elway7Sharpe84
Banned
Yeah, those charts needs to be updated.
Freezie KO
Banned
Completely agree. So many people post stuff like this without explaining what it means. You see it a lot in NPD threads.
"I give Wii U until after the holiday and then it's done."
What's done? What does that mean? That Nintendo will drop all support? All future support like Smash and Zelda U? That they're going to leave the console business? That they're going to release a new console soon after (despite having enough difficulty dealing with the HD console they have now)?
It's just a facile and meaningless statement.
SporeCrawler
Member
Doom in terms of companies usually means liquidation after an insolvency procedure
nintendo is not going to release a new console after one or two years
at worst they will ride it out like the GC (which isnt a bad thing imho. GC has good games)
D
Deleted member 752119
Unconfirmed Member
Attach rates are always going to be high on Nintendo consoles as gamers buy them for their first party games and buy most of them that come out.
Doesn't change the fact that most non-gamers that got it for Wii Sports and/or Wii Fit probably bought few additional games. Unfortunately there's no hard data on that to generate attach rates for those types vs. more traditional gamers. So all we have is anecdotes that aren't really worth arguing about. But all the non-gamer friends/family I have that bought one for Wii Fit bought little else--with the exception of a couple families with young kids that ended up buying the kids games on it. So that probably helped the attach rate a lot as well.
Remember, Spore, the main gist of the thread is financial. So it having good games is irrelevant.
You are right, though, for the wrong reason. Sales like the GC had would be an improvement.
SporeCrawler
Member
on average someone who bought a wii bought 8,8 games
even with wii sports and wii fit thats 6,8 other games in avergae.
what i was saying is that they will not discontinue the wiiu since they dont want to end up like sega (they had a huge image problem because of premature platform deaths.)
Honestly one of Nintendo's smartest moves should be trying to capitalize on the pending lift on the video game console ban in china.
I read some of the caveats to the ban lift are a console has to be manufactured in shanghai and the government gets final say in game releases.
It's honestly the perfect oppurtunity for Nintendo. They're games are kid friendly and likely would be viewed as less threatening by the Chinese government then those coming from Sony and Microsoft and its a billion plus market they can tap into.
The black market their is strong but I can't imagine its so large that it can't be overcome.
Open a manufactoring plant in china and start spitting out 2Ds's, wiiU's and maybe even a retro console that plays old games and re-release a select library of classics.
But it really isn't. How much you have cash on hand dictates how many failed products you can make together with investors watching. If you have enough cash and assets your company is too expensive to buy. I'm not sure anybody could buy Nintendo for this very reason. It's too expensive.
SporeCrawler
Member
they tried it.. dunno if it succeded though (it was a download only console i think?)
IIRC, 2/3 of software sales were third party (something like 330 million of the 880 million were first party? I'd have to sift through the financial reports, which I can't do at the moment).
There is no "hard data" necessary for these people. That hard data is total software sales, which are - as demonstrated - quite healthy. So if all of these anecdotal stories were true and millions upon millions of people bought the thing for wii sports and wii fit, there were an absolute ton of people buying like 30 games for it.
Point being, the software sales were healthy on the platform and the hard data reflects as such.
The Wii U on the other hand is a completely different story, but the myth about Wii software sales needed to be corrected. It quite clearly did not sit in many closets collecting billions of grains of dust. People used them and bought tons of software for them.
michaelius
Banned
oconnomiyaki
Member
Can't tell if this is sarcastic, but the comparison could be a good one. Both were number one in their field and now both are struggling against competitors that adapted while they stagnated and followed tried and true strategies. Both have boatloads of cash but that does nothing to help them move products, and investors aren't particularly fond of quarterly losses no matter how large your reserves.
The situation for Nintendo might not be as dire as BlackBerry's, but I think the people saying it will be all right probably have their head in the sand.
About Poland?
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
oconnomiyaki
Member
I can. I live in a country where Nintendo is dead. It's never really had much of a presence anyway. One local distributor called the brand a lemon. Only dedicated gaming outlets carry stock and it's always relegated to small sections at the back.
And nobody cares. Everyone just gets on with it. Nintendo make great games, but they could fade from existence and the world would keep spinning.
SporeCrawler
Member
yes but nintendo represents like 50% of the japanese gaming industry and even in europe and NA they are one of the bigger publishers.
Straight ether.
It's my understanding that consoles and console games have been banned there since 2000? Didnt the ique have some work around or something? A lot has changed in china the last 13 years. I'm not sure it's a guaranteed success but expanding your potential market by over a billion people seems like smart business if the numbers make sense(and who knows they might now).
SporeCrawler
Member
maybe it was not deemed a console? i think it was a controller only device (the n64 was built in the controller).
KillerMan91
Member
It's not up to Nintendo to decide that will they discontinue WiiU if its sales wont pick up. Retailers will decide that. Same is happening to Vita. If I remember right there was already a thread about some retailer in UK that dropped WiiU.
For the moment and mainly due to factors outside its control, like currency exchange rates. The Wii U business is running at a loss. 3DS is slumping. Not a rosy outlook for the future. Businesses do look out to the future. They don't just ask "Are we profitable now?", they also ask "Will we be profitable in the future?". And that is not a certainty.
Marketshare isn't as meaningful as you think it is (Look at Apple as an example). Nintendo has been in the black for almost all of their time in the video game business. They've made a profit with almost every console they've made, Wii U aside.
SporeCrawler
Member
that happened with GC too though. that doesnt mean that the GC was dropped altogether.
Nintendo isn't really that expensive. It's market cap is $17 billion. Blackberry's market cap was $32 billion in 2011. Nokia was $40 billion in 2011. HTC was $34 billion in 2011. Nintendo's cash has also fallen from $12 billion to about $9-10 billion in 2 years.
airmangataosenai
Member
No, like many large companies they don't just sit on the cash they accumulate, they invest it. The net income from last year came entirely from those investments, the 3DS and Wii U lost money last year.
I come from a country with rampant economic and social problems, not to mention piracy, and even so, the "dead" of Nintendo would mean that at lest one third (being optimistic) would quit gaming.
Nintendo is not THAT huge anymore, but is still a force that can't be ignored.
I can also post charts that mislead and confuse past performance with present or future success.
I thought it was attributed mainly to currency exchange rates, not investments?
H_Prestige
Banned
Can you explain how this chart is relevant right now?
They had no net income last year and their cash and short term investments decreased. They had some net income last quarter due to Japan's currency manipulation.
Some more research shows it fit some loophole and that the DSi and ps2 also got released there. Both huge victims of piracy.
I guess I may have underestimated chinas piracy issue. Seems its a hugely and rampant discouragement for companies.
KillerMan91
Member
I can also post charts that mislead and confuse past performance with present or future success.
Sorry the offtopic but it still amazes me that in three years Nokia went from that to the point where they had to sell their phone division because it was bankrupting them. Pretty magical achievement.