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[Cygnus X-1]

Investors think that they are the future and are pouring tons of market capital into them. Because investors aren't that smart. Hence why Nintendo shouldn't listen to them. Remember this guy?

I seriously can't believe this dude spoke like that in front of other investors and Iwata himself.

 

[schuelma]

Then they've done a great feint by making everyone think they can't by failing to do so or even lay the groundwork for generations! That's impressive.

I don't even know what this means.

 

[jman2050]

It's an investment bubble. These publishers will keep going as long as they get investment dollars to fill the gap between their costs and their sales income. This will persist until investors discover the model is unsound... which may take a while.

The big masterstroke about all this is that Apple will end up being the big winner in all this. They've taken an entirely hands-off approach to the gaming sector of the App Store, only really improving their already existing game development tools for developers. No matter what happens to individual companies, Apple gets 30% of everything while investing very little above what they normally would. When the other shoe drops and investors end up losing money, so what, it's not like they cared about games in the first place. It was and always will be a bullet point for them to sell their shiniest and newest iDevices to the masses.

And I can't see how anyone can begrudge them for that.

 

[zerokoolpsx]

They overestimated their handheld and their dependence on 3D. Everyone thought it was great at last year's E3, but it bombed now. They're not gonna exit the hw market, but won't be raking in the dough like they did with the DS and Wii earlier.
All investors care about are constant growth, and the 3DS aren't selling anywhere near their expectations. I would sell their stocks if I was them too.

 

[elostyle]

It is a good point that Nintendo does not have much that would indicate a repeat of brain training and the like for the DS. However, I believe they will be targeting that adult market with the Wii U eventually. Still, it's a big hole in the 3DS line up which presents itself more as a platform for kids.

On the other hand, after the DS came out, I bought Nintendo stock on analyst comments like this and made a ton of money.

 

[krypt0nian]

Pokemon MMO. Play the main game on Wii U/3DS. Level up or play quests on "other platforms."

Drop the bomb now!

You might as well ask for "blowjob attachment" if you're going to ask for obvious things that Nintendo will never do.

 

[Orayn]

Nope, it just shows once again that gaming industry news will always suck because gamers know little about business, journalists know little about gaming, and tech heads only give a damn about Apple products.

The blind leading the blind, since the 90's.

 

[Guardian Bob]

Pokemon MMO. Play the main game on Wii U/3DS. Level up or play quests on "other platforms."

Drop the bomb now!

That would be cool, but also underlines one of Nintendo's problems. They seam unwilling or completely blind to really use online to their advantage.

Star Fox just came out without online support. Are you kidding me?!

 

[Starchasing]

It is a big problem for the entire industry, not only for Nintendo. These casual gamers are getting apps for something close to nothing and generate very low incomes overall (and average). I wonder how long such business will last till the average player will start searching for less shitty gaming experience and till third parties will stop develop games for iOS.

Also people gaming on an iphone will sooner or later become bored with the type of games that can be achieved with just a touchscreen... and the will move on to the next hot thing... thats how casual markets go

 

[Cipherr]

Most people would agree with your sentiment, but mobile gaming is getting vilified currently due to the prevailing opinions that everyone in the industry should go mobile/social or go out of business.

Pretty much this. I would agree with anyone saying gaming is growing, and that mobile gaming is a part of that growth as a whole.

Its when the crazies start trying to claim that mobile gaming is replacing, and not expanding upon mobile gaming that I start to buck. And for good reason. Most of the people claiming so are just a bunch of lunatics aboard the "I love my smartphone manufacturer SOOOOOO much" train that they will eat up anything dished out.

Cherry picking games and figures, doom, gloom and FUD. Nonsense, the whole lot of it.

 

[mAcOdIn]

I don't even know what this means.

It's a joke. Saying Nintendo knows what they need to do when they've done nothing but the opposite is a laughable defense IMO. Sure, Nintendo the company has been around a very long time but they've only been in video games for about 35 years or so, which again is a long time but this market is young as hell still and being in it for the entirety so far is kind of meaningless. I mean, I could say Atari had been in it since the start so they know what to do but we know how that turned out. Nintendo is showing that they do not know what to do, they know what they did before and how that worked and are desperately trying to get that to work again despite the environment changing around them.

But I'm not saying they should listen to the stockholders either as they're also batshit insane.

 

[krypt0nian]

Also people gaming on an iphone will sooner or later become bored with the type of games that can be achieved with just a touchscreen... and the will move on to the next hot thing... thats how casual markets go

Not in this case. They say the best camera is the one you have with you. The vast majority of pics uploaded to sites like Flikr have turned out to be iPhone pics.

iOS is the game system they have with them and that alone will guarantee constant game sales.

 

[Respawn]

To many folks posting like they understand what's going on. Same ol rally cry against investors and talk about they don't matter.

 

[Cygnus X-1]

Nintendo have been around the longest of any past/present manufacturers. They know what they need to do.

Yes, this is true now. But with 3DS Nintendo seemed to be too confident and too arrogant. Price was too high indeed, but the true joke was the line-up. It smelled a lot like when Sony priced PS3 at 600$ and said it would have sold 5 millions without games.

They made some big, inexcusable mistake you know. Right now they're back on track because they saw the fire just under their asses.

But it is also true that the failure of 3D as main feature of the handheld was surprising after Avatar's success. I truly thought this was going to become the mass market 3D device. Too bad the 3D hype burst just after 1 year. Sure it was something difficult to see at that time.

 

[SoulPlaya]

WROOOOOOOOONG.gif

No son they are not. Not at all.

Even if the WiiU is only half as successful as the Wii.
It would still be their second best selling home console.

And to investors, that's a problem. This is capitalism. Capitalism cares about constant growth. To them, Nintendo needs to beat forecasts, and make more money than they did before.

 

[Pachterballs]

Still incredibly low. I have to say I'm surprised. Why are there companies getting so much credit?

incredibly low?
That's 80 million a year from a game thats just sitting there and being ported across various handhelds + ads. 1 game or iterations of it. And they don't sell angry birds on android - its ad driven

iterations of 1 game (rio/angrybirds/seasons) selling at $0.99-3 bucks a pop. And I'm going to guess mighty eagle nets them money too. When rovio catches on to in app purchases; their revenue will no doubt increase.

and every time they drop price; sales rocket.

 

[DefectiveReject]

Then they've done a great feint by making everyone think they can't by failing to do so or even lay the groundwork for generations! That's impressive.

Yes because being the ONLY manufacturer to make cash and profit in each generation it has been in, is the sign of a joke company??

Did you know the N64 and GC sold FAAAAAAAR less than the SNES and NES
Did you know they didn't kill Nintendo
Did you know Nintendo still made profit on them despite being/having low sales comparatively.

So i think sales wise it goes
Wii > NES > SNES > N64 > GC.
They are still here, making profit. They know what to do.
And as of yet we know absolutely nothing about what the WiiU will have at launch.
If you think it'll be a 3DS level launch you'll be as mistaken as a shitty speculative investor.

The clever thing with Nintendo is they don't put all their money on the table with each console. They play middle ground and if it fails it doesn't cost them too much. But as of yet aside from the VirtualBoy. Nothing has failed.

 

[MaddenNFL64]

Nintendo getting kicked in the shins by the media lately over the 3ds, and stock price dropping.

I'm not really a Nintendo guy anymore like I used to be in my childhood, but always got a soft spot for them.

So ya, I hope they pull through, and show everyone that they haven't survived this long against massive multinational corporations because they can't take a hit.

 

[The_Darkest_Red]

To many folks posting like they understand what's going on. Same ol rally cry against investors and talk about they don't matter.

Can you honestly read that article and conclude that those investors know more about the gaming industry than the average GAF poster?

 

[Cygnus X-1]

Also people gaming on an iphone will sooner or later become bored with the type of games that can be achieved with just a touchscreen... and the will move on to the next hot thing... thats how casual markets go

Sure. The fact that the casual crowd shifted from DS to iOS doesn't mean by any means that they will keep playing this way for the next years. In just some months they could shift again to some other form of entertainment. That's also a flaw in the reasoning of investors.

 

[Father_Brain]

Nope, it just shows once again that gaming industry news will always suck because gamers know little about business, journalists know little about gaming, and tech heads only give a damn about Apple products.

Well said, and this doesn't even get into the overlap between those categories - i.e. Professional Gaming Journalists who are also tech-heads and as such have a heavy confirmation bias toward anecdotal "my six-year-old niece loves playing Tiny Wings on her iPod Touch and has no interest in a 3DS"-type evidence for the Nintendo Doom narrative.

 

[Starchasing]

Not in this case. They say the best camera is the one you have with you. The vast majority of pics uploaded to sites like Flikr have turned out to be iPhone pics.

iOS is the game system they have with them and that alone will guarantee constant game sales.

People will get bored with the games eventually and look somewhere else to pass their time

 

[krypt0nian]

People will get bored with the games eventually and look somewhere else to pas their time

People said no one would use the iPhone shitty camera too. "It's a fad" doesn't apply always.

 

[R_thanatos]

I don't believe any diehard handheld gamer can be happy with what is offered on iOS or Android.

Same here and that is coming from someone who registered a apple store account last week ... the choice was really tiny...

 

[Evlar]

To many folks posting like they understand what's going on. Same ol rally cry against investors and talk about they don't matter.

Would you advise people to put their money in these companies?

 

[SovanJedi]

Most people would agree with your sentiment, but mobile gaming is getting vilified currently due to the prevailing opinions that everyone in the industry should go mobile/social or go out of business.

Yes, and that's the problem. Mobile and social is great for upstart developers like me and my crew to get in without having to deal with console gaming development bugbears, but it can't possibly be the be-all to end-all of games developers. You'd think they would have learned their lesson when everyone jumped to non-smartphone mobile gaming 5 years ago because the small guys were making themselves rich and the bottom fell out of that market too, but nope! It's the exact same thing over again, only in ever more feverish rates of demand.

Investors. Are Fucking. STUPID.

 

[ElyrionX]

Can you honestly read that article and conclude that those investors know more about the gaming industry than the average GAF poster?

The average GAF poster expected the Wii to bomb hard.

Plus the average GAF poster has absolutely no idea how stocks are valued.

 

[SeanR1221]

"Nintendo succeeded by pulling in people who weren't gamers and their needs now are no longer being filled by Nintendo, they are happy playing games on their mobile phones,"

This is a good and big point.

Yes and a point that seems to go over a lot of people's heads.

Nintendo's growth wasn't completely driven by regular gamers. A new audience was introduced. That audience has the potential to move on. I'm not sure why everyone is overlooking this and saying mobile gaming is no big deal.

 

[DefectiveReject]

It's a joke. Saying Nintendo knows what they need to do when they've done nothing but the opposite is a laughable defense IMO. Sure, Nintendo the company has been around a very long time but they've only been in video games for about 35 years or so, which again is a long time but this market is young as hell still and being in it for the entirety so far is kind of meaningless. I mean, I could say Atari had been in it since the start so they know what to do but we know how that turned out. Nintendo is showing that they do not know what to do, they know what they did before and how that worked and are desperately trying to get that to work again despite the environment changing around them.

But I'm not saying they should listen to the stockholders either as they're also batshit insane.

Didn't say they need do nothing at all.

I said they know what they need to do and are doing it. Check it.

 

[thezerofire]

a series of 3DS game images depicting Miyamoto and Iwata as a pair of young lovers was met with silence.

wat

 

[wsippel]

incredibly low?
That's 80 million a year from a game thats just sitting there and being ported across various handhelds + ads. 1 game or iterations of it. And they don't sell angry birds on android - its ad driven

iterations of 1 game (rio/angrybirds/seasons) selling at $0.99-3 bucks a pop. And I'm going to guess mighty eagle nets them money too. When rovio catches on to in app purchases; their revenue will no doubt increase.

and every time they drop price; sales rocket.

Except it isn't $80 million a year, it fluctuates. Heavily. And unless Angry Birds will last forever or Rovio has some magic lightning rod, they'll still be bankrupt in two or three years, when nobody gives a fuck about AB anymore and they have nothing new to sell. But they get lots of venture capital right now, so the founders will live the rest of lifes in luxury, watching the market and their company crash and burn from a comfortable distance.

 

[linkboy]

I have both an iPhone 4 and a 3DS.

I can't stand fucking playing anything that requires actual inputs on my iPhone. A touchscreen can't replace a d-pad.

The game I play most on my iPhone is War (the card game). A quick tap of my thumb is all that's required.

I'd shot myself if I tried to play something like Mario on it.

 

[The Bookerman]

After reading the first page, I can say that some folks here on gaf would definetly be better analysts than those mentioned in the reuters article.

Seriously. They show off the sequel to the biggest game in Japan and ultimatly they are doomed.

Even Pachter is better than these goofs.

 

[B!TCH]

In a subdued Tokyo conference hall on Tuesday, an appearance by the company's star game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, wielding a toy sword and shield raised a laugh, but a series of 3DS game images depicting Miyamoto and Iwata as a pair of young lovers was met with silence.

Ummm, what?

Anyway, all this means is the stakes are much higher for the Wii U now. To be perfectly blunt, Nintendo can't afford to stumble out of the gates with Wii U. 2012 will be a very interesting year for the games industry.

 

[mAcOdIn]

Yes because being the ONLY manufacturer to make cash and profit in each generation it has been in, is the sign of a joke company??

Did you know the N64 and GC sold FAAAAAAAR less than the SNES and NES
Did you know they didn't kill Nintendo
Did you know Nintendo still made profit on them despite being/having low sales comparatively.

So i think sales wise it goes
Wii > NES > SNES > N64 > GC.
They are still here, making profit. They know what to do.
And as of yet we know absolutely nothing about what the WiiU will have at launch.
If you think it'll be a 3DS level launch you'll be as mistaken as a shitty speculative investor.

The clever thing with Nintendo is they don't put all their money on the table with each console. They play middle ground and if it fails it doesn't cost them too much. But as of yet aside from the VirtualBoy. Nothing has failed.

I never said Nintendo would die. And right now they're losing money on the 3DS are they going to lose money on the Wii-U at launch too? I'm not saying there's no place for Nintendo at all but they're a public company and the public demands that they constantly grow, not stagnate and not retreat. I have absolutely no doubt that Nintendo could survive just fine on nothing but the GC's marketshare and selling just their own games, sure the amount of releases would probably slow as they shed a developer or two but Nintendo would survive and there'd be new mario's and Zelda's and the fans could line up every couple of years and buy the next console as the rest of the world walks by wondering what the fuck those guys are lining up for. I never said or meant to imply that Nintendo would die.

However, up until about this point the home gaming industry has been pretty straightforward, didn't have on-line multiplayer, hardware backwards compatibility, digital releases along with a host of other things going on right now, it was essentially release a box with games on it and profit. To a degree that will always be true, what will change will be the amount of people willing to buy a dedicated box when there are now so many things just as capable as your box that also offer other features.

I also believe that the Wii-U, again, will be fine this generation but that it will fail to live up to the Wii, which in investor's eyes will be a total failure. From a gamer's perspective Nintendo will continue to make Nintendo games for it and they will be good so it will not be a total failure in our eyes but I think that it will again fail to attract the hardcore and I think it will attract far less casuals than the Wii did before it. Unless Nintendo does a complete 180, delivers a great online experience and store along with totally revamping the way it does business between people wanting to put stuff on the store it will just be another sour footnote in their history as a whole despite keeping the core Nintendo fans happy and will just make it that much harder for Nintendo to get more of the casual market and hardcore the next time around.

Didn't say they need do nothing at all.

I said they know what they need to do and are doing it. Check it.

And I didn't say they were doing nothing I said they were doing nothing they needed to do and in fact were doing the opposite! And you can check that!

 

[commish]

Like I've been saying all along, mobile gaming will completely transform (or kill off those who do not adapt) handheld gaming.

 

[M3d10n]

Oh and Gameloft are one of the biggest developers out there on iOS (backed by some of the strongest marketing power of any iOS dev) and make most of their sales by selling their games at $0.99.

Being generous and assuming the average price of sale was $3, you'd be looking at $60 million being generated by 160 games.

That's pathetic.

To better show how pathetic this app store revenue is in comparison to traditional handhelds, let's do a quick and dirty comparison.

As of July 7th (Apple WWDC Keynote) The iOS App Store had generated $3.6 Billion ($2.5 Billion paid to developers after Apple's 30% cut) in revenue in total since its launch in 2008.

Mario Kart DS alone has generated $621 million in revenue (20.70 million units sold as of December 2010 @ $30)

One DS game alone has generated over one fifth of the revenue generated by the entire App Store over the course of its history (Oh and that includes all non game Apps as well)

Ah, actual data. Where's Dave?

 

[Starchasing]

People said no one would use the iPhone shitty camera too. "It's a fad" doesn't apply always.

You re mixing different markets and btw i said that the people would not care about the shitty iphone camera.

The games market and most casual entretainment markets are fad oriented...

 

[Dunlop]

Its when the crazies start trying to claim that mobile gaming is replacing, and not expanding upon mobile gaming that I start to buck. And for good reason. Most of the people claiming so are just a bunch of lunatics aboard the "I love my smartphone manufacturer SOOOOOO much" train that they will eat up anything dished out.

But mobile (smartphone, tablet) gaming is taking a huge chunk out for traditional handheld gaming, it is foolish not to concede that.

Anecdotal but, I've been taking the train to work for over a decade now, where the kids once had DS,PSP it is now smartphones,Ipad's. I honestly can not remember the last time I saw handheld. It's not that the games are better (cause the are not) but combined with social application integration (facebook, twitter, texting) they are just much more attractive ($2 games is a bonus).

Nintendo is feeling that now, Sony will soon. With $200 tablets on the way it will be getting worse.

 

[Dave Long]

Ah, actual data. Where's Dave?

Me?

 

[krypt0nian]

You re mixing different markets and btw i said that the people would not care about the shitty iphone camera.

The games market and most casual entretainment markets are fad oriented...

And I'm saying they will play the games that are already in their pocket, ala the iPhone camera.

 

[Deku]

I think you're right. Angry Birds is a phenomenon and it will not be matched or exceeded on the iOS platform. It's one of those right game, right time situations but it doesn't prove that mobile gaming is big, just that Angry Birds is big.

Nintendo always have an ace up their sleeve that analysts and investors ignore, children. There will always be more kids to play Pokemon, Mario or Zelda. Nintendo makes affordable hardware for children. Parents recognize this and are comfortable with Nintendo.

As more and more parents grow up with Wii or DS, they will continue to turn to Nintendo for their children's videogame entertainment.

The loyalty argument can only go so far.

I think with the convenience and form factor of smartphones, the traditional gaming handheld needs a rethink.

Nintendo's tried this by making them more convergence-like, but their cost limitations prevent them from going balls out. I can't imagine a 3DS with 3x 3megapixel cameras, 8 anf 16 GB SKU and Cortex CPU doing significantly better than current numbers and they certainly won't have the option of cutting their $250 subsidized platform down to $160, so their frugal design decisions already have a direct benefit and likely saved the 3DS from completely failing like the PS3.


That said, I think they need to answer a fundamental question in the next generation. Either stick to dedicated gaming handhelds or abandon it. If they choose the former, they need a rethink. A generic portable box that is slightly larger than your standard smartphone isn't going to be enough. Maybe they can move to new devices with a new form factor - credit card sized devices, or something that sidesteps smartphones entirely, but they'll have to face those design decisions now.

 

[Quadrangulum]

Nintendo should become privately held.

 

[caligula13]

so, the same idiots who hated nintendo since 2006 since they were "destroying" the video-games-world are the one who really detroyed it with buying smartphones and other shit?

 

[walking fiend]

Some ideas are just...
Canon and Nikon should start making cellphones as well, cause you know, cellphones have cameras as well and they are going to destroy camera market.

Nintendo should become privately held.

Do we know if they (or Yamauichi) hasn't been already buying back stocks?

 

[Pureauthor]

Me?

Other Dave. The smoky one.

 

[Seraphinianus]

Ah, actual data. Where's Dave?

dave's not here, man

 

[Knux-Future]

Like I've been saying all along, mobile gaming will completely transform (or kill off those who do not adapt) handheld gaming.

and if this is true then fuck the world.

mobile gaming should merely be a supplement not a death sentence for handheld gaming.

Pisses me off just thinking about it.

 

[JCX]

Nintendo is doomed again?

 

[StevieP]

Comparing $1 to $1 is comparing apples and oranges in this case. Zelda is worth a $1, maybe $2 to a large portion of impulse buyers. Cut the Rope is still in it's first run, if you will. Zelda has already made its money and converting it to other platforms is techinically easy nowadays. $1 makes it an impulse buy. It also draws more people into using the eShop where they might purchase current content and drive more game sales.

I recall purchasing Majora's Mask on the Wii Virtual console for $10 not too long ago, and it was worth every single penny of that $10 to me. It is a full-fledged game that provides many hours of entertainment (much as the original Zelda on NES). Are you really suggesting that Nintendo should sell its back catalog for $1 or $2 price points to compete with... Doodle Jump?