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Nintendo 1H 2012 results - $367M operating loss, 5.06M 3DS, 5.5M Wii U forecast

Not sure if old, but...

Pixel counted the European home console hardware chart.

To nearest 10K I get around:

PS3 - 2.55M YTD, 1.61M W14-W41
360 - 1.75M YTD, 1.07M W14-W41
WII - 1.22M YTD, 0.65M W14-W41

I'll try my hand at the handheld chart, it's so much "busier" though.

360 at minus 800k in eu.

i have it at +527k YTD in USA.

then we'll have japan. I have PS3 ~+840k in there through Oct 21 (so the time frame is slightly different)

So you have something like PS3 +1.1m on the year I guess. But the caveat as always, 360 tends to do best on the back end of the year.
 
I live in London. On every single bus and in every tube there are people playing games on their smartphones. Not a single one with 3DS.

There are two possibilities at this point: either the gaming industry and Nintendo particularly, find a way to make dedicated handheld consoles interesting for the mass market again - and unfortunately it's not just a matter of having many AAA games anymore; or simply handheld gaming is going to become a smaller and smaller niche.

Videogames on smartphones now are just jokes - pulling out big numbers with so small profits. That's because the games are totally inexpensive.

Who said that Nintendo is forced to sell their high quality games at these low prices?

The point is: smartphones are the tool to access a large audience and it's nowadays much more effective than selling dedicated hardware. If Nintendo bring some big franchise on these platforms and sell them at 30-40$, for example - it's likely that anyway out of the hundreds of millions people an acceptable percentage will buy the game even if at relatively high cost, because the quality is much higher. The number of people will sure be lower than the number of people purchasing a 0.99$ game. But I bet that worldwide it would output bigger number than what Nintendo can achieve now on 3DS.

Sure, this is quite a bet: that's why I would suggest to just port NSMB2 on Android and iPhone. The game already is out, so risks are low to zero. It would be an interesting test.

If the game is too new: just port the original Super Mario Bros for the NES. I'm sure that even this game would sell like crazy - though it's almost 30 years old.

Suggesting a 2D Mario perfectly prooves the point. It is just not playable on a touch only device. Simple as that.
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
European YTD and W14-W41 (in brackets).

3DS - 1.97M (1.38M)
PSV - 0.75M (0.38M)

The PSV is also it's European LTD... poor PSV.
Those PSV figures are not unlike what's been happening in the US. It's just under 800K right now, and most of that was the first two months...
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
Can we estimate from the given graphs whether the PSV + PSP sales might actually reach the 12 million (?) that Sony last discussed after 1Q?
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
Well, Vita certainly isn't hitting the 8m clarified later on. I dunno about PSP, is 4m do-able?
Ah, I missed the clarification. Thanks.

I was hoping someone like Road, who often does pixelcounting, would have time to look at these graphs. *nudge nudge* ;)
 
For reference. Pixel counting the US chart gives me:

PS3
Jan - 195K
Feb - 347K
Mar - 334K
Apr - 172K
May - 130K
Jun - 188K
Jul - 141K
Aug - 142K
Sep - 201K
------------
YTD - 1849K

3DS
Jan - 170K
Feb - 263K
Mar - 225K
Apr - 128K
May - 116K
Jun - 160K
Jul - 129K
Aug - 179K
Sep - 243K
------------
YTD - 1612K

WII
Jan - 152K
Feb - 224K
Mar - 176K
Apr - 91K
May - 71K
Jun - 95K
Jul - 69K
Aug - 60K
Sep - 77K
------------
YTD - 1014K

PSV
Feb - 225K
Mar - 213K
Apr - 73K
May - 53K
Jun - 78K
Jul - 49K
Aug - 34K
Sep - 56K
------------
YTD - 782K

Not sure how close that is to our current estimates from NPD thread detective work. I didn't do the 360 as those numbers are already in the public anyway. (EDIT: Should have probably rounded to nearest 5K; meh)
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
For reference. Pixel counting the US chart gives me:

PS3
Jan - 195K
Feb - 347K
Mar - 334K
Apr - 172K
May - 130K
Jun - 188K
Jul - 141K
Aug - 142K
Sep - 201K
------------
YTD - 1849K

3DS
Jan - 170K
Feb - 263K
Mar - 225K
Apr - 128K
May - 116K
Jun - 160K
Jul - 129K
Aug - 179K
Sep - 243K
------------
YTD - 1612K

WII
Jan - 152K
Feb - 224K
Mar - 176K
Apr - 91K
May - 71K
Jun - 95K
Jul - 69K
Aug - 60K
Sep - 77K
------------
YTD - 1014K

PSV
Feb - 225K
Mar - 213K
Apr - 73K
May - 53K
Jun - 78K
Jul - 49K
Aug - 34K
Sep - 56K
------------
YTD - 782K

Not sure how close that is to our current estimates from NPD thread detective work. I didn't do the 360 as those numbers are already in the public anyway.
Very good. Just eyeballing the PS3 figures real quickly, you're only 2-3K away from my YTD figure, as a result of random ±1-3K variations in each month.

My figures (not from pixel-counting):
PS3 = 1847K
3DS = 1606K
WII = 1019K
PSV = 771K

Obviously a big difference in PSV. I'll have to look into that.

Edit: With the exception of one month, I think all the PSV estimates are overestimates. I stand by my figure.
 
Well, the strength of the 99£/99€ PSP surprised me. (I think that's the price.)

The PSP ain't doing to bad in continental Europe (don't think its doing anything in the UK though) so its possible with Japanese sales that may hit its part of the target but it'll struggle, vita on the other hand would shock me if it shipped 3 million
 
Do you have a link or something? That clarification flew by me too.
My bad, it was the original projection that was clarified.

Original
16m PSP+Vita
10m Vita
6m PSP


Revised
12m PSP+Vita
??? Vita
??? PSP


The natural assumption was that 2m just got sliced off both platforms, but Sony never confirmed for sure this time.
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
The PSP ain't doing to bad in continental Europe (don't think its doing anything in the UK though) so its possible with Japanese sales that may hit its part of the target but it'll struggle, vita on the other hand would shock me if it shipped 3 million
(bolded part) is probably a good point. Nintendo stressed in its presentation that Europe is not monolithic.
 

Mael

Member
Even then it's pretty weird. For example PS1 far outlived its competition despite PS2 pulling crazy numbers at the same time.

Sony released the psOne (which is different from the ps1 btw) as the cheapo alternative when ps2 came out.
Now Nintendo barely acknowledge that the DS exists, they're even advertising new(read late) DS game as games playable on 3DS
So don't expect much life from the DS
 
Even then it's pretty weird. For example PS1 far outlived its competition despite PS2 pulling crazy numbers at the same time.

The difference being the 3ds and ds have been relatively close in price, there was literally no point buying the ds though that doesn't seem to stop Americans
 
Very good. Just eyeballing the PS3 figures real quickly, you're only 2-3K away from my YTD figure, as a result of random ±1-3K variations in each month.

My figures (not from pixel-counting):
PS3 = 1847K
3DS = 1606K
WII = 1019K
PSV = 771K

Obviously a big difference in PSV. I'll have to look into that.
I think there's just more error in measuring from the graph with PSV, since the numbers/distances are so small. And those errors are amplified since these are monthly averages.

I did a second attempt and ended up with:
Feb - 224
Mar - 208
Apr - 71
May - 52
Jun - 74
Jul - 48
Aug - 33
Sep - 54
----------
YTD - 764

Still quite a bit off your number.
 
The difference being the 3ds and ds have been relatively close in price, there was literally no point buying the ds though that doesn't seem to stop Americans

When you put it in that way it starts to make sense.

Also does anyone know what countries Nintendo includes to their European data? Do they include Eastern Europe for example (Sales of 99€ PSP would make a lot more sense)
 
Just wondering how close the ds is to the PS2, its commonly suggested the ds is slightly behind but I've been thinking Nintendo do not include Chinese sales in their figures, have we ever had any hints from there? And I don't think (but could be wrong) they include Korean sales and the ds sold at least a million there many years ago
 
Just wondering how close the ds is to the PS2, its commonly suggested the ds is slightly behind but I've been thinking Nintendo do not include Chinese sales in their figures, have we ever had any hints from there? And I don't think (but could be wrong) they include Korean sales and the ds sold at least a million there many years ago
They include Korea, but not China.
 

Celine

Member
When you put it in that way it starts to make sense.

Also does anyone know what countries Nintendo includes to their European data? Do they include Eastern Europe for example (Sales of 99€ PSP would make a lot more sense)
Usually it's UK,France,Germany and Spain ( and sometime Italy).
 

Heropon

Member
When you put it in that way it starts to make sense.

Also does anyone know what countries Nintendo includes to their European data? Do they include Eastern Europe for example (Sales of 99€ PSP would make a lot more sense)

I suppose they use the same countries than in the software chart: UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Finland and Switzerland. So no Eastern Europe.
 
Just wondering how close the ds is to the PS2, its commonly suggested the ds is slightly behind but I've been thinking Nintendo do not include Chinese sales in their figures, have we ever had any hints from there? And I don't think (but could be wrong) they include Korean sales and the ds sold at least a million there many years ago

Well even if DS would be ahead with Chinese sales PS2 is actually outshipping DS nowadays so it would just pass it again lol

I suppose they use the same countries than in the software chart: UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Finland and Switzerland. So no Eastern Europe.

Would be nice to get some frequent data from eastern europe too. From my understanding Sony pretty much dominates there though.
 
Use this along with the other charts to get a better representation of things:
15l.jpg
 

numble

Member
There.. you said it yourself. The vast majority of games on smartphones are shit. And this is coming from a person who has more games on his phone than everyone else i know. Most og them are good for taking a shit - but that´s it. People are brainwashed by the numbers apple is announcing on every event - but the only company who really makes some money in the app store is Apple. Maybe Rovio but thats it. iirc they announced last year that they have spent 5 billion in revenue on all app developers. Since the beginning of the app store. So we have thousand of apps, thousands of developers and "just" 5 billion in revenue (last year) in i guess 5 years. Nintendo is laughing at these numbers. The real competition is the time people spent on their phones for things like facebook, minigames and so on. Time they won´t invest playing their 3ds.

You''re not looking at the numbers correctly.

First, the App Store launched in 2008, so it's 4 years, 3 years as of last year.
Second, the rate of growth is more important than the total.

Look at the rate based on announced payments:
October 2012: $6.5 billion paid to developers.
June 2012: $5 billion paid to developers.
January 2012: $4 billion paid to developers.
October 2011: $3 billion paid to developers.
March 2011: $2 billion paid to developers.
June 2010: $1 billion paid to developers.
July 2008: $0 paid.

From 2008 to 2010 (2 years): $1 billion
From June 2010 to March 2011 (10 months): $1 billion
From March 2011 to October 2011 (7 months): $1 billion
From October 2011 to January 2012 (3 months, including holiday): $1 billion
From January 2012 to June 2012 (5 months): $1 billion
From June 2012 to October 2012 (5-6 months): $1.5 billion

It took from July 2008 to October 2011 (3.25 years) to make the first $3 billion.
It took from October 2011 to October 2012 (1 year) to make the next $3.5 billion.
 
I suppose they use the same countries than in the software chart: UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Finland and Switzerland. So no Eastern Europe.

Yep which means PSP and PS3 are looking even better World Wide since Eastern block is Playstation land to higher degree than West.
 
Again though current ds shipments don't include Chinese sales and may not include Korean
They do include Korean sales, though they're not reported independently anymore (but were briefly).

China sales are through iQue, which is why Nintendo doesn't report them. GBA and DS should both be a bit higher than Nintendo's reported totals thanks to that. N64 too depending on how you want to count the iQue Player.

PS2 was never sold in China (no "consoles" are officially), but it was in Hong Kong and SCE includes those in their totals.


Why don't they include China? Seems odd that they would build, ship and sell units that aren't acknowledged in the earnings reports.
Because Nintendo doesn't build and ship them, iQue does.
 
They do include Korean sales, though they're not reported independently anymore (but were briefly).

China sales are through iQue, which is why Nintendo doesn't report them. GBA and DS should both be a bit higher than Nintendo's reported totals thanks to that. N64 too depending on how you want to count the iQue Player.

PS2 was never sold in China (no "consoles" are officially), but it was in Hong Kong and SCE includes those in their totals.



Because Nintendo doesn't build and ship them, iQue does.

So Korea is included now thanks, I know we don't have any figures (do we?) But surely its fair to assume a country the size of china managed to buy at least a couple of million of them?
 

kswiston

Member
From 2008 to 2010 (2 years): $1 billion
From June 2010 to March 2011 (10 months): $1 billion
From March 2011 to October 2011 (7 months): $1 billion
From October 2011 to January 2012 (3 months, including holiday): $1 billion
From January 2012 to June 2012 (5 months): $1 billion
From June 2012 to October 2012 (5-6 months): $1.5 billion

It took from July 2008 to October 2011 (3.25 years) to make the first $3 billion.
It took from October 2011 to October 2012 (1 year) to make the next $3.5 billion.

Split between over 700k apps though, more than 500k which have nothing to do with gaming (there are currently 125k gaming apps on iOS according to tracking sites which document this stuff).

Figure just short of $10B in revenue since the appstore launched when you factor in Apple's share, with around $5 billion from this past year. Even if 60% of that money is coming from gaming apps, it's a lot smaller than the global dedicated handheld software revenue. Nintendo's bigger sellers do $250M-$1B in revenue each. What game has done $100M+ in revenue on iOS? Maybe Angry Birds? Zynga managed just over $1B in total revenue from Facebook, iOS and Android last year with over 300 million active users. That's all of $4 a person spent over the full year if we bump up that total by 30% to account for licensing/distributor fees.
 
Why don't they include China? Seems odd that they would build, ship and sell units that aren't acknowledged in the earnings reports.

edit: Thanks, lunchwithyuzo. I had never even heard of iQue before.

For further clarification ique is a joint venture between Nintendo and a Chinese company
 

Miles X

Member
So 9 months into the year PS3 is only 800k ahead of 360, with 360 generally being the strong holiday competitor ... gonna be a long time before PS3 outsells 360.
 
So Korea is included now thanks, I know we don't have any figures (do we?) But surely its fair to assume a country the size of china managed to buy at least a couple of million of them?
We've never gotten any iQue numbers afaik. They're totally private so they really don't have anything to report on this sort of stuff regularly. :[

In PS2's corner there's also the Japan only PSX DVR that could count for it. I don't know if we ever got numbers for that though, I expect it should be low (like six figures rather than seven). Still, with as close as DS and PS2 are, that may be all it takes.
 

numble

Member
Split between over 700k apps though, more than 500k which have nothing to do with gaming (there are currently 125k gaming apps on iOS according to tracking sites which document this stuff).

Figure just short of $10B in revenue since the appstore launched when you factor in Apple's share, with around $5 billion from this past year. Even if 60% of that money is coming from gaming apps, it's a lot smaller than the global dedicated handheld software revenue. Nintendo's bigger sellers do $250M-$1B in revenue each. What game has done $100M+ in revenue on iOS? Maybe Angry Birds? Zynga managed just over $1B in total revenue from Facebook, iOS and Android last year with over 300 million active users. That's all of $4 a person spent over the full year if we bump up that total by 30% to account for licensing/distributor fees.

It's not split between 700k apps, since many of those apps are free, and the figure doesn't include ad payments.

I think the rate of growth is very notable--how much do you think total revenue will be after this holiday season? At the end of next year?
 

jcm

Member
So 9 months into the year PS3 is only 800k ahead of 360, with 360 generally being the strong holiday competitor ... gonna be a long time before PS3 outsells 360.

The 360 isn't "generally" stronger during holiday. This is a common GAF myth. They've each had an equal number of bigger holiday quarters.

Code:
      06/07      07/08     08/09      09/10      10/11      11/12    
360    4.4        4.3       6.0        5.2        6.3        8.2
PS3    1.7        4.9       4.5        6.5        6.3        6.5
 

Mael

Member
It's not split between 700k apps, since many of those apps are free, and the figure doesn't include ad payments.

I think the rate of growth is very notable--how much do you think total revenue will be after this holiday season? At the end of next year?

And how much of them are from apps that are 20bucks or more?
 

numble

Member
And how much of them are from apps that are 20bucks or more?
I think all apps in the Top 10 grossing, maybe even top 20, with the exception of Pages at $15, have IAP of $19.99 or more, at least for iPad. You can do a more detailed analysis if you're trying to prove a statistical data point.
 

Miles X

Member
The 360 isn't "generally" stronger during holiday. This is a common GAF myth. They've each had an equal number of bigger holiday quarters.

Code:
      06/07      07/08     08/09      09/10      10/11      11/12    
360    4.4        4.3       6.0        5.2        6.3        8.2
PS3    1.7        4.9       4.5        6.5        6.3        6.5

Looks to me like 360 is slightly above PS3, but what's most important is recent years. 10/11 they did sell a lot more consoles, they had to ship stock from Q1 in, resulting in a very high Q1 shipment. Last xmas speaks for itself. Perhaps though I should have said, ever since Kinect and slim 360 has done much better during the holidays.

I don't see why this holiday will be any different.
 
Looks to me like 360 is slightly above PS3, but what's most important is recent years. 10/11 they did sell a lot more consoles, they had to ship stock from Q1 in, resulting in a very high Q1 shipment. Last xmas speaks for itself. Perhaps though I should have said, ever since Kinect and slim 360 has done much better during the holidays.

I don't see why this holiday will be any different.
It could shift since 360 is down so much in it's biggest region (NA), while PS3 seems to be holding better in it's key regions (EU, JP). Kinect deflated after a year, so it's pretty much down to how the core swings this year in each market. Wii U could take a bite out of both too, though that's going to obviously be limited.
 

Cromat

Member
Some people here are missing the point. It doesn't matter that the 3DS offers a vastly superior gaming experience to phones and tablets. People still choose to spend their time and money on phones and tablets rather than dedicated gaming handhelds.

For those who want evidence that mobile devices are having a substantial negative effect on the 3DS and Vita, you need only to look at this forum. I still remember the early DS and PSP days, and it was nothing like this. Constant discussions, animosity and console wars, general excitement. This time around it's relatively silent, and these devices are mostly met by apathy. The various phone and tablet threads in OT (and there are a ton of them) get a lot more traffic than anything 3DS or Vita related, and a lot more heated discussion.

Dedicated gaming handhelds are waning, despite still offering the better gaming experience. Arguing that iOS games are all crap (which is not true) does not change the fact that people apparently prefer crap games on phones to good games on handhelds. The pricing model has changed and a lot of people think that spending $30-$40 on portable games is ridiculous.
 

Elios83

Member
Looks to me like 360 is slightly above PS3, but what's most important is recent years. 10/11 they did sell a lot more consoles, they had to ship stock from Q1 in, resulting in a very high Q1 shipment. Last xmas speaks for itself. Perhaps though I should have said, ever since Kinect and slim 360 has done much better during the holidays.

I don't see why this holiday will be any different.

Last christmas doesn't speak for itself, infact MS massively overshipped and paid for that for the next two quarters in the current year with really low shipments.
Also at this point the Kinect 'effect' is vanished in the US too.
 

Mael

Member
Some people here are missing the point. It doesn't matter that the 3DS offers a vastly superior gaming experience to phones and tablets. People still choose to spend their time and money on phones and tablets rather than dedicated gaming handhelds.

For those who want evidence that mobile devices are having a substantial negative effect on the 3DS and Vita, you need only to look at this forum. I still remember the early DS and PSP days, and it was nothing like this. Constant discussions, animosity and console wars, general excitement. This time around it's relatively silent, and these devices are mostly met by apathy. The various phone and tablet threads in OT (and there are a ton of them) get a lot more traffic than anything 3DS or Vita related, and a lot more heated discussion.

Dedicated gaming handhelds are waning, despite still offering the better gaming experience. Arguing that iOS games are all crap (which is not true) does not change the fact that people apparently prefer crap games on phones to good games on handhelds. The pricing model has changed and a lot of people think that spending $30-$40 on portable games is ridiculous.
The thing is there'smore evidence showing that 3d hurt the 3ds more than any competition.
It's basically saying that since the Wii market fell off a cliff it means we should be seeing Mario kart on PS3. And I'll stop because by god is typing on a phone unwieldly.
 
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