Which company is larger?

[LordChris915]

hsrob said:

LordChris915 said:

waron said:

Nintendo - 8,390bn yen in 2007
Microsoft - about 78mld$ worth in 2009
Sony - 6,540bn yen in 2007(currently 230bn $)

Ninendo is the 2nd biggest japanese company that was only beaten by Toyota while whole sony didn't even make it to top 10 in 2007. remind me if i'm wrong but wasn't sony constantly in the red for the past 2 years while nintendo was making more profit in each quarter than SCE did on ps2 in its 10 year lifespan COMBINED.

That is the case with companies that have large assets, when they lose, the lose big, but they will never go bust and when they start winning again, they win big!

The recession has done alot of damage to Sony, but they expect to take damage, it will be a huge success for Sony if they can take less damage because it means that they will be in a better position when the world economy recovers!

Nintendo are in a much more precarious position because while they are flying high now, their company is very small in terms of assets and is therefore less stable, they could make huge profits one year and huge losses the next!

While this may be theoretically true of small companies, Nintendo has only had a single quarter of loss in it's 121 years of operation and has never posted a full year loss.

While judging 'size' depends on how you look at it I'd be tending to put MS on top, Sony second and Nintendo third. Nintendo are however awesome at turning a profit, even in their worst years.

See the below taken from Neogaf: http://neogaf.net/forum/showpost.php?p=19625436&postcount=90

Note: this data is just comparing Nintendo with the respective games division of the other two so I'm not suggesting It can be used to argue that Nintendo is the bigger company, I've just included it for interests sake.

Y/E 1998 $902,811,090 $1,023,333,867 $1,926,144,957
Y/E 1999 $1,102,563,557 $1,301,350,000 $2,403,913,557
Y/E 2000 $722,738,949 $1,368,207,547 $2,090,946,497
Y/E 2001 -$449,776,290 $677,576,000 $227,799,710
Y/E 2002 $629,101,056 $895,872,180 -$1,135,000,000 $389,973,237
Y/E 2003 $935,569,253 $834,333,333 -$1,191,000,000 $578,902,586
Y/E 2004 $627,195,212 $993,161,303 -$1,337,000,000 $283,356,515
Y/E 2005 $419,888,799 $1,056,056,202 -$539,000,000 $936,945,001
Y/E 2006 $69,129,058 $774,478,055 -$1,339,000,000 -$495,392,887
Y/E 2007 -$1,970,923,859 $1,914,666,388 -$1,969,000,000 -$2,025,257,471
Y/E 2008 -$1,079,994,103 $4,322,637,887 $426,000,000 $3,668,643,783
Y/E 2009 -$664,313,787 $5,691,428,301 $169,000,000 $5,196,114,515

Y/E 10Q1 -$413,541,667 $420,843,750 $312,000,000 $319,302,083
Y/E 10Q2 -$653,333,333 $710,655,556 $375,000,000 $432,011,111
Y/E 10Q3 $210,629,750 $2,087,904,452 N/A N/A

Total
$387,078,407 $24,072,504,822 -$6,157,000,000 $16,004,049,028

Full Year Average
$103,665,745 $1,737,758,422 -$1,001,857,143 $914,270,499

Profitable Years
8 12 2 10

Non Profitable Years
4 0 6 2

Average in Loss Year
-$1,041,252,010 N/A -$1,251,666,667 -$1,260,325,179

Average in Profit Year
$676,124,622 $1,737,758,422 $333,000,000 $1,389,625,094

Whether you put MS or Sony ontop depends on whether you value assets or capital, capital is all well and good so long as you have something to spend it on which will generate more capital, assets are great so long as they are making money, plus you have the added bonus of being able you use assets to aid other assets, something Sony has recently re-discovered.

I agree with your figures, however thir track record does not make them any less vulnerable, one or two bad consoles and it could all be over, the fact of the matter is, we probably would not be talking about Nintendo right now if it did not have such a good record!