Mr Khan said:
Many easily forget that the GameCube was almost as profitable as the PS2. Nintendo was down, certainly, but there were not out.
They could easily have embraced the niche that they carved for themselves with GameCube, and continued to prosper. |
Not true.
The GC was profitable yes, but no where near the PS2.... probably only made about 1/4-1/3 of what the PS2 made.
As Naum said above me, Nintendo was as profitable as Sony's gaming division during the PS2 era, but those profits were not from the GC alone, they mostly game from the GBAdvance, but also lingering from GB/N64 as well as the early DS. (of course the "PS2 era" profits for Sony were also coming from the PS1)
I estimated a while back (earlier in 2009) what Sony made with it's consoles, I believe I worked it out to $5billion on the PS1 (10 years to 2005) and about $3 billion on the PS2 (though this is still increasing) they were about break even on the PSP, though now should be somewhere between 500mil and 1billion.
The PS3 meanwhile had lost alsmot all the money the others had made, so minus $7billion or so (and that figure of loss is still increasing)
Given that, I think I can roughly (more roughly than I did for Sony) work out some Nintendo consoles: (up to March 2009 same as for when I did Sonys)
Wii: $5 billion
DS: $7.5 billion
GBA: $2.5 billion
GC: $1 billlion
N64: $1.5 billion
(even more incredibly roughly)
SNES: $3 billion
NES: $2.5 billion
GB: $6 billion
Virtual Boy: minus $1.5 billion.
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That leaves about $2.5 billion over 25 years that they could have made from all the extra merchandise and other stuff like Hanafuda Cards. (Remember this is very rought though... with the Sony figures I am probably within 3-400 milllion for all the platforms, but I could be a bigger percentage out for the Nintendo ones... should give a rough idea though)
