MDMAlliance said: VGKing said: kirby007 said: VGKing said: JoeTheBro said: They have a successful handheld that can offset losses on the Wii U. It is defiantly a serious situation but not as bad as you make it sound. Also that other company that shall not be named has continuously dropped sales predictions of one of their products and nothing major in management has happened. 3DS is not selling well despite it being #1 in the weekly charts. Japan is really the only region where it is selling very well. SINCE WHEN IS SELLING AWESOME IN ONE REGION NOT SELLING WELL ? Go to the front page and look at North America and Europe sales. They are ABYSMAL for a console that's been out nearly 2 years. 21,986 31,926 99,806 162,058 39,801 54,966 15,225 132,965 55,495 27,088 490 89,592 Hmmm.  You mean this?

Yes. Those. Horrible sales. 3DS is selling below the PS3 in America..almost half to be more precise. 3DS should be obliterating the PS3, it is not only much cheaper, but it is NEWER, it is PORTABLE and it supposedly has great games.

VGKing said: MDMAlliance said: 21,986 31,926 99,806 162,058 39,801 54,966 15,225 132,965 55,495 27,088 490 89,592 Hmmm.  You mean this? Yes. Those. Horrible sales. 3DS is selling below the PS3 in America..almost half to be more precise. 3DS should be obliterating the PS3, it is not only much cheaper, but it is NEWER, it is PORTABLE and it supposedly has great games.

I wouldn't say that.  PS3 has a larger install base, which CAN be said to lower its sales, but also the other way around.  It has a larger install base, as well.  That, coupled with the fact that a lot of its games do appeal more to Western audiences.  Put that all together, and you still have sales that are all around what you call "abyssmal."  Console gaming is also stronger in North America than handheld gaming.  

Something I do find very intruiging is that Europe is selling quite a large amount more 3DS' than North America.  

MDMAlliance said: VGKing said: MDMAlliance said: 21,986 31,926 99,806 162,058 39,801 54,966 15,225 132,965 55,495 27,088 490 89,592 Hmmm.  You mean this? Yes. Those. Horrible sales. 3DS is selling below the PS3 in America..almost half to be more precise. 3DS should be obliterating the PS3, it is not only much cheaper, but it is NEWER, it is PORTABLE and it supposedly has great games. I wouldn't say that.  PS3 has a larger install base, which CAN be said to lower its sales, but also the other way around.  It has a larger install base, as well.  That, coupled with the fact that a lot of its games do appeal more to Western audiences.  Put that all together, and you still have sales that are all around what you call "abyssmal."  Console gaming is also stronger in North America than handheld gaming.   Something I do find very intruiging is that Europe is selling quite a large amount more 3DS' than North America.

Another fact that is also intriguing is that Europe hasn't gotten FE:A yet nor a few other big games. They have had a couple dry months. In April, Europe is going to buy a lot more 3DS's.

Personally I think Nintendo are happy for the stock to drop.

This will give them the opportunity to purchase their stock back cheap with some of the funds they have in the bank. Then (hopefully) they announce some big hitters that will drive the stock up and they sell again, nice way to make money.


I remember Microsoft doing similar things in particular around when win XP launched, when stock goes low they buy it back and when they release something new that causes a stock price rise they sell back some stock to make money.

Nintendo as a stock was severely overvalued by the market. Last generations success created a rush on the stock from speculative investors. Who lacked a firm grasp on how this particular market worked, or understood what the company they were buying was about. They just knew this company had a really hot product that was dominating the twenty four news cycle. Which created a bubble where the prices the stock was being sold at. Didn't reflect the reality of this companies future performance potential.

I find the concept of the investors contemplating a revolt to be highly dubious. Investors make rash, ill informed, and ultimately stupid decisions all of the time. All this devaluing of the stock is likely to cause. Is for these people to just scold themselves for not looking harder before they made their leap. They are more then likely to blame themselves rather then Nintendo. As they should, because Nintendo didn't do anything wrong. Except come out with a product that was a smash hit.

That all said as of the moment Nintendo isn't a bad stock to own. After all they are consistently profitable. They have many lucrative intellectual properties. Have more then sufficient cash reserves to whether poor economic conditions, and to invest in other business ventures if the situation presents itself. Plus Nintendo has demonstrated the ability to create massively successful products. So investors probably have the hope that they can do it again. Maybe not today, but maybe five or six years down the line.

That all said Nintendo does have a serious problem as far as its core business is concerned. Nintendo isn't adapting to the marketplace anywhere near fast enough to stay relevant. On the portable side Tablets and Smart Phones are fast making portable gaming devices irrelevant in the Western marketplace. Where consumers are placing a much higher premium on devices that support a wide range of applications. While on the console side it is sadly becoming quite apparent that Nintendo is either incapable, or unwilling to evolve to meet the needs of a increasingly sophisticated core audience.

Nintendo as a company hasn't changed for the better part of thirty years. While gamers the audience that they should covet have most definitely changed in that span of time. The fact that it hasn't changed is a testament to the sheer intransigence of senior management to invest the time, and resources into new software initiative, and much more importantly into a new design philosophy. Nintendo is still too much of a toy company at heart, and this market is fast moving away from treating gaming is merely the pursuit of children.

Will senior management get the axe. I really doubt that will be the case, but it would probably be the absolute best thing that could happen for the companies long term future. Nintendo seriously needs new blood to modernize their operations to become more competitive across the board. I feel they really squandered the windfall they enjoyed last generation. By not investing in desperately needed improvements to their operations. The reason their new console is doing so poorly isn't for the most commonly sited reasons.

There is a market for a console that costs as much as Wii U. Their competition sold a great many consoles at that very price point. It isn't that they don't have enough games, and this kind of gets ignored, and frankly it shouldn't. Nintendo launched with more titles then either of their competitors did with their last launches. The problem is that from top to bottom. Their console is just poorly conceived, and just plain outdated by modern standards.

Psh. It's having a bad quarter. Not surprising given its lackluster Holiday lineup. 3DS has passed 8 million hardware sales in the US weeks before its second anniversary; the DS didn't hit 8 million until a couple of weeks after its second anniversary. That's December 2006 for those keeping track, well after the DS Lite and New Super Mario Bros launches, and let me remind everyone that the Lite sold at $120.

Software is even better, as the 3DS is also tracking ahead of the DS in that department in America -- without factoring digital sales into the equation. Not only digital sales of retail titles (which are probably modest), but of digital-only games, which are likely quite decent.

It's no secret the 3DS is struggling in Europe. No... struggling isn't the right word. Europe is the 3DS's weakest market, especially compared to DS sales. Surely this has no direct relationship to publishers dragging their feet with European localizations for games like Fire Emblem, Harvest Moon, Brain Age, Devil Survivor Overclocked, Code of Princess, Scribblenauts, Etrian Odyssey IV, and so on.

I like "it supposedly has great games" as a reason 3DS should be outselling PS3, as though the PS3 did not also "supposedly" have great games.

Have you seen this?

Makes it easy to move around.

Wii U is not going to be a huge hit barring some new type of franchise that turns the system around.

It's probably another GCN-N64 type seller. That said I think Nintendo basically hinted at their future strategy -- a third hardware pillar is coming, one that won't require any more dev resources. Iwata basically spelled it out in the last investor's meeting.

Think a tablet and/or cell phone platform that can play 3DS/DS/Wii/GCN/VC etc. content, perhaps even a tablet some day that can run have Wii U games ported to it.

Three profitable pillars would allow Nintendo to reap reasonable profits even if the Wii U only sells like the GameCube or N64.

Not sure what you're getting at here, I'm not moving any goalposts around as far as I can tell. 3DS is doing great. Hardware is selling slowly right now for obvious reasons. It'll pick up again.

Not you. LOL.