| Million said: @fku You obviously don't understand my point I won't bother arguing with you. |
Let's see if I do understand your point and fkusumot's rebuttal.
You believe that if Nintendo was to flop the next two generations they would be effectively dead whereas Sony and MS, while not making their shareholder happy, would be fine.
After being pointed out that Nintendo did flop the last two generation you tried to change the definition of a flop so as to consider them successful, just less so than the PS1 and PS2.
So let's define some parameters here:
2 generations is 10 years (the last 3 generations of Nintendo home consoles came every 5 years).
A flop can be defined by comparison to MS as to my knowledge they are the only company to lose so much money on such a consistent basis in the videogame market. So let's say a flop is losing about 1 Billion $ a year as that is the nice round number bandied about to signify MS's deep loss in the vg market (it is actually more on average but 1 billion should be way more than enough to set the bar for a flop).
A dollar is about 100 Yens. I might be a litle more or a little less now but it can change either way over a decade and it tend to be within 10% of 100Y of a dollar so let's not quibble and use that as our benchmark.
So Nintendo would, according to you, be efffectively dead if they had two flops in a row that is if Nintendo lost 10 billion $ or 1000 billion yens over a period of 10 years.
Now this link: http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2008/080424e.pdf
tells us on page 7 that as of FY08 Nintendo's current assets are 1,646 billion yens and on page 8 that their current liabilities are 567 billions yens so the difference is 1,079 yens.
So with just the money Nintendo has either in the bank or can/will have it shortly in the bank and after deducting what Nintendo has to pay they already have enough money to lose $1 billion a year and still be well and truly alive. Of course if they were to flop for a third generation they would eventually run out of money but given at the speed at which they are earning money with the DS+Wii combo they probably will have enough money before the end of this generation to flop 3 generations in a row.
So while Nintendo might only have videogames to rely on at the moment their short and medium term future in the videogame market is in no term uncertain, it is actually more certain than Sony's (less money available and more liabilities makes them less likely to withstand one generation with losses of 1 billion a year, let alone 2 gens as can be seen by their newfound focus on achieving profitability instead of marketshare) and Microsoft's (they have the money but with Sony's marketshare emasculated by the Wii they might lose the main reason behind the Xbox and continuing losses in that context will be harder for shareholders to swallow).
On the other hand, Nintendo having both the money to sweat out 2 flops and the drive to do so (because they have no other business outside of videogames to fall back to so they are more likely to stick with it than abandon it to focus on other, more profitable, divisions as they don't have any), it is rather safe to say that they will still be a player in the videogame market 10 years from now.
Now did I misunderstand your point (or fkusumot's, though I just know I didn't misunderstood him as his makes sense)? If so you might want to rephrase it as I took your point ot be what you wrote, not what you meant as I cannot read your mind.
"I do not suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it"
