Normally I would say no as they don't have to fear MS or Sony competition, but this time Microsoft is beginning to encroach upon Ninty's territory with and could have a Natal marketing blowout. Nintendo is probably prepared to fight motion-control-hype with motion-control-hype if they have to.

@Claude: Probably, but they are having it just after X10. GDC is happening really soon after their summit, so I think they have something urgent to announce. It's happening in Australia, Europe and the USA. Wonder why Japanese are not getting one.

I don't think that makes a lot of sense. Nintendo are not naive enough to think the Vitality Sensor would help counter the hype of Natal or Arc. They released that because investors may have been losing confidence in Nintendo, and they needed to show that they were still on the Blue Ocean track.

@Maxwell: What's that suposed to mean? Announcing a game is way too different, this is a new peripheral we are talking about, which magically got announced out of the blue when their competitors announced new technologies, difference is they did have tech demos ready and the peripheral fully functional. Nintendo never announces anything with too much anticipation, and even less if what they are announcing is not even ready to be shown. But I guess you like to troll my threads so go ahead :)

Investors were not losing confidence yet. That happened before the past holiday season. I think it was an obvoius case of them wanting to get some attention after their competitors announced new technologies. I don't even think the VS was meant to be unveiled until this year's E3.

Investors were losing confidence from late 08. Just look at their stock chart. It's a big fall in late 08 and a continual, but gradual, decline all through 09. Until NSMB, lol.

But the panic started in Q3 when they dropped the price, Wii had a record Q1 in 2009 and E3 happened in Q2. Anyways my point about the VS shown prematurely still stands.

The vitality sensor  announced without a tech demo, was really odd. You're probably right.

I'm not sure about this summit. It seems right in line with starting the hype for their 2010 releases. They build it up with the lastest mario too.

Not really.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/charts/chartdl.aspx?Symbol=NTDOY&CP=0&PT=8

Most of Nintendo's declines were in 2008, during the financial collapse, naturally. But looking just at 09, it had a rapid decline just after holiday 08, and has had a gradual decline through 09. There was no panic in 2009 because investors had expected things to turn bad for Nintendo even while they were having a record Q1.

Edit: If we had been looking at YoY comparison charts for 08 heading into 09, we would have seen it coming too. Right now those charts are showing the reverse trend, thankfully.

@Demotruk: Actually not, the Wii has been on decline for the past 2 weeks, compared to its performance of last year. Perhaps they are having this summit to reinvigorate the confidence of their investors.

But you know, VS wasn't announced to please investors. It was announced because they wanted to remain competitive in the innovations field. They were supposed to demonstrate Wii M+ last year, VS was a peripheral that was going to be shown this year. Why even show something you will not show again until you attend to the next show next year? Makes no sense.