"Analysts: Nintendo facing its biggest challenge"

But that's the thing London-boy. Nobody is arguing over who is second, everyone knows who is second. So what is your problem here? All anyone here has said is that its strange that this analyst somehow thinks XBox is second when clearly it is not. It devalue's the rest of his opinion. Your comments have been completely out of place and a total overeaction. Now your suggesting that I am arguing over numbers? AFAICS all I have done is tried to explain to you why the analysts incorrect sales info may devalue his overall opinion.

Regarding your other comment. Phil said nothing about having as much money as Sony and MS (although frankly I'm not sure Sony have so much more money then Nintendo). Nintendo doesn't need as much money to do as he suggested, if they wanted to do so.

 

Whatever Phil said, it's clear that a firm like Nintendo (although probably proportionally more profitable than Sony - not totally - and certainly more profitable than MS) do NOT have as much funds as MS can afford to throw down the toilet. (Let's leave Sony out of this or i'll be branded a Sony fanboi for one reason or another)...

Nintendo might have enough funds to finance a next gen console, although it's all to be seen what losses they are prepared to take initially, seen how MS seems to just throw money at the Xbox project, whatever the amount...

 

I guess ignorance is bliss. Provided you have insight into how analysts work, I suggest you not comment any further on what they do.

Tommy McClain

 

Yeah.... I guess that's the difference between a journalist and an analyst... And i find it hard to believe MS would go as far as paying an unknown "analyst" just to discredit the competition in an unknown website/wherever-the-report-was-posted...

 

Here's the original press release and links to more info on the report...

http://www.instat.com/press.asp?Sku=IN030703ME&ID=813

Tommy McClain

EDIT: removed duplicate URL

 

Analysts typically do their work at the behest of financial services companies who desire a better understanding of the market so that they may adjust their investment portfolio towards those firms they feel have a better chance of success over the long term. I doubt that these professionals are motivated by nationalism and I also doubt that they lack an understanding of the industry.

It's also hard to disagree with what they say. The game console, once a perfectly stand-alone commodity, is slowly being integrated into larger networked environments (both local and wide). In such a changing environment Nintendo has a structural disadvantage that it simply did not have before.

 

thank god someone found the time to explain those simple little things...

see, when i actually have something constructing to write, i just dont have the time to post it

 

You read that? I read the summary, just take a look at the bullet list in the summary and you'll know what I mean by claiming it's obviously biased in favour of xbox: "It has also attempted to establish its Xbox Live online [...] faces challenges in Europe and Japan." - this is ALL they have as a problematic point for MS. On Gamecube the summary has nothing but negative statements, now that's what I call unbiased analysis. This report is a joke...

edit: I'm not claiming any deep understanding of the industry here, nor trying to draw conclusions, but when I see something that goes against any common sense you don't need a PhD degree in economics to notice it.

 

Although i agree with Akira, in that he gave the right definition of Analyst, saying an analyst cannot be biased some way or another would be like saying "Economists always agree". Which we all know is far from the truth...

 

Hehe. There's lies, damn lies, and economics...

 

please... i can't breath !!!

stop making me laugh like that.. the berne convention forbids that..

analysts, what a bunch of nice guys... the untoucheables who rates enron corp's stock as "outperform" a few weeks before it files for bankruptcy

or who suggest that the xbox will be soon profitable in december 2002.. for your information xbox losses only widened since..

coincidentially it's the same cabinet which gave these analysis..

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3557&highlight=enron

when analysts say something that serves the communication of a company, it has to be taken w/ a big truck of salt...

only the naive and the blind don't know that some repports are sponsored by a particular company, that explains a lot of factual errors, inconsistencies, bias...

 

I keep scratching my head on this...how can you say it's clearly not? On what basis is the claim for "being second" made? You certainly can't tell from the "executive summary" of the analysts report.

Someone spend the $3,000 for the actual report, and then you'll have your answer for why it's claimed XBOX is #2.

Until then, I'd say your assertion that the analyst has "lost credibility", makes yourself a bit less credible.

 

Teasy:

I'm glad my comments weren't misunderstood. It remains a mistery what london-boy is trying to read out of other people's post, but I surely never implied that Nintendo has anywhere near the amount Microsoft could dedicate if need be (which is not even relevant to what I said anyway).

As for Sony not having more money than Nintendo: I guess this might hold true when concidering the amount of cash in the bank, though Sony has of course a great advantage in sheer market presence and fabbing, even compared to Microsoft.


London-boy:

Teasy pretty much got what I was trying to say. I never implied that Nintendo needs as much cash as Microsoft. The point was that they have money to secure 3rd parties, exclusive content and technology to reach mass market appeal. Perhaps less spamming and more thinking would prevent misunderstandings such as these in the future ? *hint

Magnum PI:

Gamecube price cut is seen as a problematic thing because the company in question can not afford to compete in a price war scenario in the long distance. Microsoft obviously can - in fact, they could keep Xbox selling at a loss for years if we were to go by the cash Microsoft has alone (not to mention their other profitable divisions). Nintendo is the weakest company of the 3, it's that simple. Just think of the concequences even Sony might be facing if CELL or PS3 is a billion $$$ failure? Microsoft is in a totally different realm when it comes to money.

 

I'm certainly not trying to gloss over the Japanese market. The vast majority of the games that I play come from Japan. But it's becoming less significant as far as hardware numbers are concerned.

I don't think that Microsoft will blow out Nintendo. But they will win nonethless.

What were Microsoft's yearly profit numbers? How about Nintendo's?

 

<laughs> Well, we're still talking about this one PARTICULAR market here...

Now if only we had some actual competition in OSes and Office products as well, so they can't command obscene margins and leverage the industry... Heh.

 

I still find it amusing that at least ONE of our resident Anti-Nintendo Knights (ANK!) actually did post his own numbers that showed the GameCube ahead of Xbox worldwide... BEFORE the price drop. =)

 

Hard to trust the numbers anyway--different sources have different ones, so there's still wiggle room and sway. But it certainly shows the two without any break-out leads over the other.

 

Personally, I think that the Cube is ahead by about 500k units world-wide, but it probably won't last much beyond 2003. Nintendo is at $99, and there's not much else they can do to spur sales at this point, especially since they haven't revealed any earth shattering games in a long while. A port of MGS and Resident Evil 4 aren't going to cut it IMO.

MS has Ninja Gaiden, Halo 2, and Rallisport Challenge 2 to spike sales, not to mention the possibilities that Fable, BC, Jade Empire, and True Fantasy Live might bring to Xbox fortunes. They can also drop price to $149 and then $99 in 2005 if they need to.

Nintendo needs GAMES that appeal to 16+ year olds - badly!

At the beginning of this generation I picked Cube for 2nd place, but now I'm not so sure anymore...

 

Funny man Johnny. Other than Halo 2 I don't see any huge XB HW mover of the bunch you just mentioned. Maybe Fable if it's done right. But it'll mainly get the interests of ppl like us who already own an XB and maybe some PC guys who have been holding out thus far. MGSTS and FFCC are as good as HW movers can get. They'll move some Cube's. Maybe not a bunch but there will be a spike in sales Feb and March 04. Also some really anticipated Japanese RPG's are heading next year for Cube. ToS and BK by Namco. And I'm betting there will be plenty of hype behind RE4. Especially if the graphics are truly amazing like the pics so far.

I dont see 2004 to be a bad year for MS or the Big N. If things start to dry up for Ninty they can always do a bundle deal at $99 or go to $79. This notion that $99 is as low as allowed is nonsense. If NOA continues to do some major marketing like they have the recent months than I see 04 to continue being steady for GCN.

 

While by no means am i dismissing xbox's awesome lineup of 2004, Johnny you seem to be forgetting quite a few factors for gamecube.

Lets start with pokemon colosseum shall we? The first ever home console pokemon thats an RPG.

Then we have RPGs, a genre that is rather untapped on gamecube, starting with tales of symphonia and baten kaitos, along with an imminent announcement of VFQuest. Then we have Zelda next which will be unveilled at E3 2k4. I can already hear a few peoples coming here and say "but zelda WW didnt move that much harware!", but the thing is that zelda next wont be using the same rendering technology as WW if rumors are true (im pretty sure EAD realized that cel shading didnt attract as much as they thought). Then we have Resident evil 4, which is said will be a major shift from the main series, maybe enough to attract gamers once more. Metal gear solid and final fantasy.. remakes or not, they have shiny bright names in the eyes of mainstream gamers. What else? Oh, the sequel of the best Gamecube games and arguably one of the best this generation, Metroid prime 2. If the first MP is anything to go by on retro's first effort, i think we're in for a treat. Donkey kong adventure, rumored to be 2.5D, but a donkey kong platformer will attract gamers thats for sure. Even the shitty 64 incarnation sold really well.

There's also uncertain games that are too far off to tell if it will be good or able to move hardware, but killer7, geist, PSOIII, Mario tennis, pikmin 2, star fox 2 (im confident in ace combat team), donkey konga (music games arent for me but who knows how it will catch with families or party freaks).

Thats only stuffs that we know of course. But i wouldnt dismiss gamecube quite yet, i think they'll reinforce their worldwide 2nd position even farther in 2004. Heck, depending on how pokemon is received, that franchise alone could counter halo 2 + ninja gaiden + RC2 sales combined, its an IF but i wouldnt be surprised with pokemon.

And if you're reading this and think that im heavily biased toward gamecube, well thats because you have short memory, i'll re-quote what i said in the first sentences

There good. I'll say this, as an owner of ps2, xbox and gamecube, 2004 will ruin me and probably kill my social life