Are you kidding? Of the big three, I consider Nintendo dead-man walking. The reality is that the console business is a big company game, and Nintendo is just too small. You need to sink billions of dollars to develop and subsidize the console, be willing to lose money for years and then do it all over again 6-10 years later. Microsoft can do it, and Sony can do it, Nintendo can't. They need to make money because unlike Microsoft and Sony, they don't have other revenue streams. This necessities them releasing under-powered consoles. They got lucky with the Wii. They are not so lucky with the WiiU.
They are still the king of mobile console gaming ... sort of. Tablet and smartphones are eating away their bottom line, and the trend will continue (the minute that Apple and Google decide to focus on mobile gaming in earnest will spell the end of Nintendo). The problem for Nintendo is that mobile gaming is an afterthought for Apple and Google. They don't need to do well in that area to survive, however every point of marketshare that Nintendo loses because little Johnny is fine enough playing games on his iPad instead of buying a 3DS hurts Nintendo incredibly. Everyone will have a smartphone or a tablet, so justifying a 3DS purchase is that much harder.
They make good games, yes, but it won't change the fact that they are in a lot of trouble.
IMO, net income falling for five years with no end in sight is not "doing just fine." Just because people have wrongly claimed something in the past does not mean that they can't be rightly claiming it now.
Can anyone honestly look at these numbers and tell me Nintendo is doing "just fine?" I can see, "might be OK," or, "will not definitely die," but "just fine," is a total self-deception, especially with the recognition that the bump at the start of this year includes the sales of a new console.
If I recall correctly, they always go in or near negative when they launch a new system. Launching something like a console is expensive and causes much trepidation in a volatile place like a stock market. You can't judge a 124 year old company by the occasional bad quarter.
I'm not judging them by one quarter -- for starters, the financials for 2012 on my link are the whole year. Anyway, if they were still developing consoles that had staying power or mass appeal, I wouldn't consider these financials significant.
(The Wii did not have staying power -- many people bought it because it was neat but then didn't use it. That's not a recipe for long-term success. The WiiU doesn't even have the mass appeal the Wii had, and its staying power has yet to be proven.)
I've read this same thing at every launch of every Nintendo console for as long as I've paid attention. "Oh no, look at these bad financials, and remember how bad the last one did." Never mind that they still turned a profit even on the "dud" consoles like the N64 and Gamecube. Nothing here is out of the ordinary.
I could see this if it were some random company faltering after a big hit propelled them into the spotlight, but this is no random company pulled from obscurity. Nintendo has a history of pulling through.
I read the same claims about poor staying power for the Gamecube and N64 too. The only difference with the Wii is a lot more people use the Wii as a paperweight than did for the N64 and Gamecube.
The end of 2006 was the launch of the Wii, the end of 2012 was the launch of the Wii-U. The DS launched at the end of 2004 (the DS lite mid 2006). Nintendo is in unprecedented financial trouble. It doesn't mean their dying by any means, but considering that an increasing number of next gen. console competitors are headed to market over the next year, it's hardly enough to say "Nintendo has been on the ropes before, they'll pull through!" They've never been on the ropes this badly.
The genesis of this entire thread is Nintendo admitting HD was harder to do (more expensive) than they expected. 2013's positive number seems to indicate they're close to getting a handle on it.
7.3 is not positive. It's zero. It's borderline statistical error compared to their past successes. And competition is coming in 2013, with very strong hardware and software to back them up. Of course Mario will keep selling to some people, but Nintendo is done for for this generation in home systems.
This makes no sense whatsoever. Since the N64, nintendo consoles have always been for those who didn't want the more hardcore consoles, or wanted one in addition to. They are in no more "trouble" from the coming next gen xbox and ps than they were any previous generation. Excluding Wii they have been a niche console for generations. Absolutely no one (in the statistical sense) is thinking "should I get the wii-u or the xbox/ps4". As long as they are not competing for the hardcore market, what Sony and MS do are irrelevant to Nintendo's financials.
>Excluding Wii they have been a niche console for generations...
Niche or not, hardcore market or not, the question is can Nintendo sell 30-50 million WiiUs? If they can, they'll have a viable platform that will at least be a good enough vehicle for Mario games. If they can't, they're done on the console side.
OK, you're entitled to your opinion, I guess. For me, it seems like there is good reason to doubt, considering that the WiiU is selling even worse than the Gamecube, is falling off faster, and is running against stiffer competition.
Historically Nintendo has sold consoles off their first party titles. They have released a total of 1 so far. Judging their sales off 1 title is probably a bit premature.
Circling back to Nintendo realizing how much harder HD development is. I think the WiiU will pick up once Nintendo tunes its development process for HD and gets some titles out.
Except that when Nintendo does so, MS and Sony will have "super-HD" titles to show off. It's the Wii all over again, with 10 years backward hardware. Nintendo can't win this fight without innovative concepts, and the WiiU's one if clearly a failure : it does not appeal to gamers or casual gamers. Their Nintendolands is not a Wii Sports. So what you have left is nothing but a Gamecube, but probably even worse than that. The Gamecube was more or less at the same level as the rest of the competition at the time in terms of power, now Nintendo will have a hard time proving 1st party titles are enough to sell.
Mouhaha. "unprecedented success". They just managed to sell a lot of boxes with ONE game per system. The Wii is probably the first console where you have the lowest number of games sold per unit on average, because so many casual gamers bought it and left it lie in the dust after playing with it a couple of times.
Hell, I'm a hardcore gamer, and all I ever used my Wii for was to play Metroid Prime with a gamecube controller, since I never had a gamecube. (My wife won the thing at a raffle.) It's sitting there gathering dust.
Sure it has. The industry is much bigger. Game development is more expensive. Online strategy is important. Consoles cost more to develop and are frequently sold at a loss for years. There's competition from non-traditional markets ( tablets and smartphones and in the future, Android set-top boxes and the like). Indie gaming has made a resurgence.
I agree. I don't see Nintendo still being a hardware company in 10 years. They are either liquidated, sold to someone else for IP's, or transform into a software game company. I hope it's the latter. There is no money in hardware, it has no future outside of ever-tinier margins.
This makes me sad. Nintendo games (even the sequels) exhibit creativity and appeal an order of magnitude beyond the "mainstream" games which simply rehash visuals and weaponry. I think they are the closest to mastering games as an "art form."
Nintendo has many great games and they certainly have great brands, but let's no go overboard here. Nintendo is perfectly willing to "rehash visuals and weaponry" by releasing yet another Mario or Zelda game.
I don't think you can look at what Nintendo does in that light, especially because of the usual sense "rehash" is used in.
For example, COD(yes i know this is the obvious dead horse, but it is so for a reason). It is a fact, that every game since COD4 till present is running on the SAME GAME ENGINE, updated yes, but the same game engine. Virtually the exact same game mechanics. Same for games like "Madden".
But then you have Nintendo. Lets look at Mario. Every console has had a different style of Mario, platforms all, but incredibly different and yet people love them for the same reasons.
THAT is what makes Nintendo awesome, its that they can make games that both the aspects of being different and the same add to the game. Zelda, while not as much the same recipe, is mostly the same.
> For example, COD [...] Virtually the exact same game mechanics.
For single player, sure, but COD is a multiplayer focused game. The meta game in Black Ops 2 (the pick 10 system) is new to COD and has really changed up the game mechanics. You see a lot of diversity in player load-outs and strategies, making the game on the whole a lot more entertaining and have a lot of replay value.
I disagree. Have you played the "yet another Mario or Zelda" games? They are all entirely unique in their own way and I never feel like I'm repeating myself when I play them.
I don't think there's any reason to be sad. Zelda and Mario aren't going anywhere -- they just might be showing up on Xbtwo and PS5 instead of the Wiii.
They are still the king of mobile console gaming ... sort of. Tablet and smartphones are eating away their bottom line, and the trend will continue (the minute that Apple and Google decide to focus on mobile gaming in earnest will spell the end of Nintendo). The problem for Nintendo is that mobile gaming is an afterthought for Apple and Google. They don't need to do well in that area to survive, however every point of marketshare that Nintendo loses because little Johnny is fine enough playing games on his iPad instead of buying a 3DS hurts Nintendo incredibly. Everyone will have a smartphone or a tablet, so justifying a 3DS purchase is that much harder.
They make good games, yes, but it won't change the fact that they are in a lot of trouble.