Iwata: "never thought about resigning"

[Mr Khan]

Soundwave said:

Things wouldn't be as bad if the 3DS isn't looking like it's going to suffer a decline. Honestly the Wii U is maybe the lesser of their two problems here ... because they have shown they can tread water with a low selling console as long as they have a handheld that's moving 15-18 million units a year like the GBA was from 2001-2004 ... the problem is the 3DS looks like it peaked at 13 million and is declining from that. 

I also think smartphones and tablets being such a magnet for young kids is frustrating Nintendo to no end. At least in that market (the battle for young kids) Nintendo I think has finally met its equal/superior. Every time I go to a Best Buy, there's always like 3-5 kids swarming around the iPad section. 

That's kinda where I see parralels ... Blackberry's always had a nice nest egg of cash too, the problem is a cash nest egg doesn't do much when your product lines are all declining in market appeal. 

Profitability in decline means you live to fight another day, though. Nintendo games are generally lightweight enough that they don't demand an 8-digit sellthrough for titles like many top-tier third party games, and if you're not employing a loss-leading model, then just selling the devices is more or less okay.

Declinism is bad for stocks and investor confidence and needs to be addressed, to be sure, but Nintendo's not in the position where they're forced to lose money, unless they feel they do need the Wii U to sell more at the definite cost of getting it profitable per-unit, and that is certainly attainable. It wasn't about the volume of GBA sales, but the fact that GBA and GameCube were both turning a per-unit profit, so everything sold was money in the bank even if it was inconsequential compared to the business Sony was doing at the time.

(the real disaster of that generation, that nobody ever mentions, is the Xbox, where Microsoft's per-unit losses got *worse* as the generation proceeded, not better. Microsoft really shat out a lot of money basically just to build a bridge for the 360)