http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/13/nintendo-idUSL3E7KD0OK20110913

My comments after the article:

* Nintendo 3DS event fails to revive excitement

* Analysts see 3DS sales falling short of target

* Investors say handheld gadgets have lost to smartphones

* Nintendo shares fall 5 pct vs 1 pct rise in Nikkei (Adds details)

By Isabel Reynolds

TOKYO, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Nintendo's attempt to rescue its failed 3DS handheld games gadget failed to dispel market gloom, triggering a 5 percent share slide and stoking deep worries for an iconic brand desperate to win back users.

On Tuesday, President Satoru Iwata introduced what he said was an unprecedented range of games, aimed at attracting everyone from hardcore gamers to fashion-conscious girls and fans of the long-running Mario series.

The Japanese company also announced on its website a new 1,500 yen ($19) slidepad accessory needed for certain games.

But analysts and investors dismissed the line-up as lacklustre and largely irrelevant in the face of cheap or free games played on the likes of Apple's iPhone and iPad and Google-powered Android devices.

Nintendo has been criticised for sticking rigidly to its own hardware, meaning it has no access to the new generation of mobile devices.

"I don't think the new games will make any difference," said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment.

"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," he said.

Nintendo's shares ended 5 percent lower in a strong market . The Kyoto-based company's shares have plunged nearly 50 percent so far this year, hit by the 3DS flop and doubts that it can replicate the success of its Wii home console with the next generation WiiU, announced at the E3 games show in June.

Nintendo, which means "Leave luck to heaven," was forced to announce price cuts of up to 40 percent in July to try to boost slumping demand for the glasses-free 3D version of the DS, but this only temporarily spurred sales.

In July, Nintendo slashed its outlook for the business year to end-March to its lowest in 27 years as it braced for losses from the 3D gadget and a stronger yen.

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.

LINE-UP OF GAMES

"From the end of this year to the beginning of next, we are planning the kind of extensive line-up that has probably never been seen before in the history of video games," Iwata told reporters and guests.

"We will make an all-out effort to see that the 3DS sells enough to become the successor to the DS," Iwata said.

That will be no easy task, given that earlier models of the DS had sold a cumulative total of about 148 million units by the end of June this year. The gadget, along with the motion-controlled Wii home console, enabled Nintendo to dominate the industry for years.

In Japan, 3DS sales leaped to more than 200,000 units in the week of the price cut, but swiftly fell back to about 55,000 units, according to research firm Enterbrain.

That leaves only the secretive company's famed content, never made available on other firms' hardware, to revive sales.

"The only possible way for Nintendo to revive would be to stop concentrating on mobile games and switch to Wii-type games for the whole family," said Makoto Kikuchi, CEO of Myojo Asset Management. "However, at the moment, I can't see this change coming."

Iwata took a 50 percent pay cut, and other executives took 20-30 percent cuts to take responsibility for the poor performance.

Analysts have cut their full-year operating profit forecasts for Nintendo by an average of 45 percent in the past 30 days and the stock is now trading at 45 times its estimated forward 12-month earnings, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Shares in software provider Capcom slumped by 8.3 percent after the company said it would be developing the next generation of its hit Monster Hunter game for the 3DS.

Nintendo slashed the price of the 3DS after sales shrivelled to just 710,000 units in April-June from 3.6 million in the first month after its launch, and a tiny fraction of the 16 million unit target for the year.

Macquarie Securities analyst David Gibson said he still expected the 3DS gadget to sell about 14.5 million units over the year. ($1 = 77.000 Japanese Yen) (Additional reporting by Tim Kelly and Natalia Konstantinovskaya; Editing by Joseph Radford and Anshuman Daga)

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My opinion is that analysts and investors don't have a clue of how this works. The NDS was selling gangbusters not a year ago, and I doubt the situation with smartphones has changed that much since then.

Irrelevant? We all know they have some IPs that sell millions, and they'll still probably sell millions. Why the insistence with dropping their hardware, I still don't get it. It was extremely successful until very recently, why leave a proven formula so easily after one single misstep. Way to overreact.

And 14.5m is not such a flop. Especially for the first year. NDS sold 9.2 million in a year. Most consoles sell less than that.

'Only temporarily spurred sales', when sales are still up, it's still the no.1 console after being dead last, so not very accurate statement. 'In Japan, 3DS sales leaped to more than 200,000 units in the week of the price cut, but swiftly fell back to about 55,000 units'. Another example that they have no idea how this works. That's completely expected, it doesn't mean the effect wore off.

I have the impression investments are like self-fulfilling prophecies. It's not so much that many investors are against Nintendo keeping their hardware, but that they know at this point the stock'll go down when they say that, and therefor sell in order not to lose and ta-da, it really did go down after Nintendo's statement.

What are your thoughts? You think Nintendo has to forget about HW and focus on SW for smartphone?

Reuters is late by a day or 2 for the d0m train, lol.

I just wish I had enough to buy Nintendo stocks right now, lol. This holiday is going to be amazing for the 3DS in Japan...

The 3DS isn't exactly a flop. A disappointment, yes. A flop? Far from it.
Let's see how it does this holiday before jumping to conclusions.

Investors in Japan are placing a lot of money into mobile gaming right now--that's the direction they want Nintendo to move in, and because Nintendo aren't moving in that direction, they won't invest in them. These are the investors who inflated Nintendo's value by jumping on during the Wii/DS explosion, and haven't really followed what the company do--any informed person would know Nintendo will not put their IP onto iOS or Android, yet that is exactly what these investors want.

Nintendo have announced enough titles and features to appeal to the traditional gaming audience--a highly profitable audience that numbers (in the least) at the tens of millions--and 3DS is bound to pick up steam on the back of all the effort Nintendo are putting into it. There's no sign as of yet of the next Brain Training or Nintendogs, but that doesn't mean it won't come. Mario Kart, Animal Crossing and (if it gets a worldwide release) Friend Collection are excellent mass-market titles and Nintendo have plenty of system sellers coming in the next 15 months. Whether or not they hit their sales targets is up in the air now, it depends on how high Christmas sales go for 3DS and whether or not high momentum can be maintained.

If I had the money, I'd invest in Nintendo now. I think this is the start of 3DS's big fightback, and it couldn't have come sooner. The burgeoning mobile market doesn't mean the traditional portable market will die off--if smartphones and tablets bring in hundreds of millions of new gamers globally in the years to come, why can't a few tens of millions of these make the transition to traditional handheld devices? If the content, pricing and marketing is right, that's what will start to happen--or at least I think that's what Iwata and co believe will happen. Right now the battle is for the traditional market, and Nintendo have pulled out some big guns just when it looked like Vita had it in the bag.

Ya, but these people generally are bandwangers. I noticed that a lot after looking at businesses. Most of them are very short term focused and I think that is never the best way to look at it. 

This is how it works for sink a company or try to guide the market where they want. I totally hate that work of puppeter. they try to pull the wires, they try to lead their horse where they want, but if it fails, then they leave the ship. But a company needs investors, what doesn't need is stupid and misleading journalism.

This.

Hey Investors not everyone wants to buy the .99 cent hot garbage on smart phones. K?....K.

Wagram, neither do I, but the general public seems to. Honestly I don't get how investors think it is good business for Nintendo to make software for 3DS, WiiU and iphone. It hurts the overall brand, imagine Sony doing the same. However maybe Nintendo should look to business with Android, and maybe investors would stop wanting it.