Nintendo Financials

[Entropy]

This is not directed at you, but I do find this ironic. The funny thing is I could care less if MS has lost money with the Xbox--as a consumer as long as the maker plans to support it through its lifetime then why should we care?

I've seen this reasoning many times, and thought I would repond to it.
Microsoft pays for this loss out of its deep pockets. Now who is lining those deep pockets? You are. Microsoft makes its money on the software it sells where it has a virtual monopoly. To government and administrations, to business and private individuals. So you pay for the XBox when you buy a Dell with Windows preinstalled, you pay with your tax-dollars, you pay with... It goes on. You can ignore this, saying that its too little to care about, but the XBox losses do cost you, and actually most everyone in the society around you subsidize Microsofts XBox venture. Some are irritated by this.

 

[Teasy]

Acert93

If someone is looking at XBox's success purely from a consumer point of view then no they don't need to care about profit and loss. But I think GwymWeepa was referring to when people look at XBox/GC ect from a business perspective.

 

[Magnum PI]

MS is willing to lose money, so arguably its not a failure, Nintendo likes to make money, and tends to do so, but its considered by many to be a failure.

did MS excpet to lose that much money ?
did MS gain as much marketshare as expected ?
were the pay-per-play and paying content, the promised online eldorado , promoted from being a gimmick to being a tangible component of the entertainment economy ?
and the digital convergence through consoles ? still not much more than buzzwords ?

xbox is a failure is microsoft failed to reach its target.

 

[Li Mu Bai]

Nintendo also derives a large amount of their profit off of internally produced software, & titles that they publish. (FF:CC for example, TOS in the UK) In fact, look at how many verified titles they're deving & publishing in '05. Their largest output ever to date:

Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball
Donkey Konga: Expansion Song Disc 2
Gamecube Pokemon
Fire Emblem: Trail of the Blue Flame
SF: Assault
Odama
LOZ
Mario 128 (yes you doubters, its definitely coming)
Geist
Mario Baseball
Kirby Adventure
Advance Wars: Under Fire
DDR w/Mario
Animal Crossing 2
Brownie Brown's forthcoming GC rpg.
Golden Sun GC (the Camelot rpg.)
DK:JB

I'm counting 15 verified here, without acknowledging AC2 nor Brownie Brown's rpg. Of course publishing entails distribution & marketing channels, all at a cost to Nintendo. Their strongest & most diverse exclusive lineup they've ever produced imo. Many are colloborative, or semi-colloborative software efforts.

 

[Sonic]

Will Mrio 128 actually be worth playing? As in, will it be on par with Mario 64 and not a game that feels like a recycled game with leftover levels? I'm not knocking the Mario series, but that is definitely the feel I get from Mario Sunshine.

Mario 64 DS is a completely different story as it is like replaying Mario 64 on N64 but in a completely insane on steroids kind of way. It is th esame experience brought out in a completely great somewhat new way.

 

[Li Mu Bai]

Will Mrio 128 actually be worth playing? As in, will it be on par with Mario 64 and not a game that feels like a recycled game with leftover levels? I'm not knocking the Mario series, but that is definitely the feel I get from Mario Sunshine.

Mario 64 DS is a completely different story as it is like replaying Mario 64 on N64 but in a completely insane on steroids kind of way. It is th esame experience brought out in a completely great somewhat new way.

From what I understand, the series is going back to it's N64 roots. With a specialized camera viewpoint, a completely different development team & director. Most of the SMS team left to the new R&D studio in Tokyo. (Deving DK:JB among others)

 

[Acert93]

Nintendo's 2005 gamelist is pretty impressive. I was checking it out earlier on IGN and I was really impressed. 2005 is going to be a big year for GCN owners. If LOZ and Mario 128 both come out I think the GCN may cause a bit of a stir, especially for parents on the cheap or hardcore gamers who are dieing for these games--$100 for a GCN (or cheaper used) is a pretty good deal when you can get games like MP & MP2, RE4, Zelda, Mario 128, StarFox, F-Zero, etc... That is the great thing about the end of a console generation: A lot of great games past and present for good deals and consoles are cheap.

 

[Evil_Cloud]

Will Mrio 128 actually be worth playing? As in, will it be on par with Mario 64 and not a game that feels like a recycled game with leftover levels? I'm not knocking the Mario series, but that is definitely the feel I get from Mario Sunshine.

Mario Sunshine did not only feel like a recycled game, it was in fact (part) a recycled game.

They used the garbage levels they scrapped in Mario 64 & Mario 64DD for the ground levels in Mario Sunshine, while the water levels were entirely new.

 

[StefanS]

That's what they get for including a free demo, making it multiplayer-friendly, and having GBA backwards compatiblity.

Worldwide, more than 2.84 million Nintendo DS systems have been sold, a little less than half of which (1.39 million) are here in the States. Because of the phenomenal demand, Nintendo has raised its hardware sales expectations to 6 million DS units shipped out by the end of their fiscal year, which is March 31. That's a million more than previously expected.

The bad news is, DS games are not selling nearly as well as Nintendo would have liked. Only 5 million games have been bought up by DS owners around the world, which is far less than the 15 million Nintendo was expecting. Their software expectation mark has been lowered to 10 million because of the lack of sales.

The features of the DS are leading to its poor game sales numbers. Players are playing the included PictoChat and Metroid Hunters Demo, taking advantage of the single-card wireless multiplayer feature, and playing GBA games on the DS. With game variety still a little slim, DS owners are happy with what they've got at the moment, apparently.

Bad News...

 

[Clashman]

I don't know about that. Doesn't 15 million seem like an awfully high expectation for the first 3 months of a console? Given the fact that there are less than 3 million DS's sold, that's like a 5+:1 tie-in ratio. Isn't that a little unrealistic at this point in time?

 

[Evil_Cloud]

I don't know about that. Doesn't 15 million seem like an awfully high expectation for the first 3 months of a console? Given the fact that there are less than 3 million DS's sold, that's like a 5+:1 tie-in ratio. Isn't that a little unrealistic at this point in time?

It seems a bit unrealistically yes, especially when considering Nintendo has adjusted its hardware shipment expectations three times in a row... From 4 to 4,5, from 4,5 to 5 and from 5 to 6 million...

 

[Ty]

At the end of 3 months, how many games were/are supposed to be available?

If there aren't that many, then consumers were expected to choose 5 out of a small batch, only of which just a couple merit any sort of interest imo. Disclaimer - I am not closely following launch titles for the DS so there could very well be a few gems in this first wave.

 

[PC-Engine]

Bad News...

I really don't understand why this is bad news.

Oh My Nintendo is teh d00md!!

There are only a handful of DS specific games available so of course the attach ratio isn't going to be unrealistically high. I own a DS and I only bought one DS game. While I wait for more DS games to be released that I actually want to buy, I'm perfectly happy playing my GBA games on it. More DS units being sold than expected will only mean more developers jumping onboard to make DS specific games. It's called the domino effect.

I'd be more worried if Nintendo didn't sell as many hardware units.

 

[Ty]

It's bad news because they sold quite a bit less than they were expecting. You call it unrealistic but I think Nintendo predicted as well as they could (imo they're in a better position to judge than you or I). Fyi, from the list of games that I've glanced, I'd agree with you that it might have been unrealistic because these early games are pretty bad.

However, it's certainly far FAR from dooming Nintendo (though I didn't see him say this anyhow) and of course they sold quite a bit more hardware units as well.

So the question is, does this signal longer term problems with DS software sales? I couldn't even begin to guess....

Understand that your argument about the domino effect also cuts against you as well. If there aren't enough cool titles for consumers to buy (witness the current forecast) then hardware sales slow down. When hardware sales slow down, then develop can as well. So in the end, it's anyone's guess if this is just a blip or a signal of a bigger bump. /shrug

 

[StefanS]

There are only a handful of DS specific games available so of course the attach ratio isn't going to be unrealistically high. I own a DS and I only bought one DS game. While I wait for more DS games to be released that I actually want to buy, I'm perfectly happy playing my GBA games on it. More DS units being sold than expected will only mean more developers jumping onboard to make DS specific games. It's called the domino effect.

I'd be more worried if Nintendo didn't sell as many hardware units.

Well, running below one third of your expectations is bad news, no matter how you look at it. Also keep in mind that Nintendo expected to ship 15 millions software units.
I can understand your obviously sensible position regarding buying software. It is probably what all the other buyers are thinking. Nonetheless Nintendo is missing a hefty chunk of revenue that they were calculating on.

 

[PC-Engine]

Were the 5 millions games shipped or sold?

 

[Teasy]

Well, running below one third of your expectations is bad news, no matter how you look at it. Also keep in mind that Nintendo expected to ship 15 millions software units.

They aren't at one third of their expectation. They didn't expect to ship 15 million games by now. They expected to ship 15 million software units by the end of March. They have simply dropped that to 10 million because they are currently lower then they expected (likely by one third).

 

[StefanS]

Were the 5 millions games shipped or sold?

AFAIR they should be shipped.

Teasy, yeah you're right; they'll be 1/3 below their expectations

 

[Evil_Cloud]

Heh, Super Mario 64DS will cross the 2 million units barrier in April, about one month after the European Nintendo DS launch (they're at +1,3 million right now), WarioWare DS is at +500,000 units and will most likely cross 1 million units when released in both Europe as North America in March, Pokemon Dash sold +250,000 units in Japan alone and Jam With The Band is at 115,000 units right now.

I wouldn't be too concerned with the profits Nintendo is making on their own titles, third parties are also selling well...