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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Nintendo won't hit their forecasts. How did they get them so wrong?

 

What's up with the forecasts?

Nintendo are too optimist... 146 68.22%
 
Nintendo are trying to de... 68 31.78%
 
Total:214
TheGhosts on 11 January 2014
Purple said:
TheGhosts said:
Xen said:
If you look at the Wii U situation at least, Nintendo is completely incapable of reading the market.

Why is Nintendo incapable of reading the market? The Nintendo Wii U just need more games, like it was with the Nintendo 3DS!!! And it's NOT Nintendo's fault that 3rd Party developers are not able to make great games for the Nintendo Wii U and are only able of makeing awful console ports with no support!!! And Nintendo can not make all the games alone which the Nintendo Wii U really needs to get more sales because at least Nintendo is not EA and they make quality games instead of rushed ports or something!!!

You're joking, right? Please tell me you're joking.

Sorry, i am not joking ;) It was the same with the Nintendo 3DS. First everyone said the Nintendo 3DS is a failure, and after the Nintendo 3DS got more and more games the sales started to getting better. And you know how it is now ;) It's always about the games!!! The Nintendo Wii U just need more awesome games!!! It doesen't matter if the games are from Nintendo or 3rd party developers, as long as there are awesome everything will be fine ;)



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Purple on 11 January 2014
Max King of the Wild said:
Purple said:
Nintendo never believed they'd hit those targets. Setting high targets gives investors the illusion that you are selling a product that will be highly desired by the market. When Nintendo fails to hit those targets, Iwata will make some lame excuses and make it seem like the only reason they failed to hit those targets is some outside factor beyond their control.

You'll hear some absolute gems come then end of the financial year. Iwata will definitely blame Western markets (this plays well with the xenophobia of Japanese investors) and don't be surprised if the old 'bad weather' excuse comes out again. He'll then apologize and pretend that the company will learn from its mistakes.


nice hypothesis but the negativity and backlash of missing the forcast greatly outweigh the illusions 

Yeah, you'd think so. But this is the same man who told investors there would be 50 million Gamecubes sold by March 2005. This is a man who thinks the short term benefit of exaggerating figures is worth any backlash that occurs later. We know he is the master of apologising and making us 'please understand'.

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/news/nintendo-chief-sets-sights-on-software/123311



TheGhosts on 11 January 2014
oniyide said:
TheGhosts said:
Xen said:
If you look at the Wii U situation at least, Nintendo is completely incapable of reading the market.

Why is Nintendo incapable of reading the market? The Nintendo Wii U just need more games, like it was with the Nintendo 3DS!!! And it's NOT Nintendo's fault that 3rd Party developers are not able to make great games for the Nintendo Wii U and are only able of makeing awful console ports with no support!!! And Nintendo can not make all the games alone which the Nintendo Wii U really needs to get more sales because at least Nintendo is not EA and they make quality games instead of rushed ports or something!!!


um what? 3rd parties have little to do with Nnty's forecasts. What games would have released that would have made Ninty meet their forecasts?

I believe that Nintendo thought that the 3rd party developers would this time make more games for the Nintendo Wii U than for the Nintendo Wii!!! And of course they consider such things in their forecasts ;)



Max King of the Wild on 11 January 2014
Slarvax said:

Thaaaaat... would be hilarious! 

Now let's think about this for a second. Wii U sold about 3+ million in 45 days after launch (if I'm correct) and about 3.5 million at the end of fiscal year. So it kind of makes sense that they expected about 9 million. A lot of "system sellers" (as shown in the present, that didn't work) were releasing, so if they sold about a third of their goal in less than two months, it would've made sense to do that three times in 12 months.

Of course, they didn't expect to get such a long drought and that their games would not boost the numbers, or that their hardware wasn't so anti-buyme, so I would say they were delusional.

Nintendo sold 3.06 at the end Dec then .39 at the end of march. terrible drop off which pointed to lower than 9mil sales. ESPECIALLY, since Nintendo missed their forcast by 2.05 already



oniyide on 11 January 2014
TheGhosts said:
oniyide said:
TheGhosts said:
Xen said:
If you look at the Wii U situation at least, Nintendo is completely incapable of reading the market.

Why is Nintendo incapable of reading the market? The Nintendo Wii U just need more games, like it was with the Nintendo 3DS!!! And it's NOT Nintendo's fault that 3rd Party developers are not able to make great games for the Nintendo Wii U and are only able of makeing awful console ports with no support!!! And Nintendo can not make all the games alone which the Nintendo Wii U really needs to get more sales because at least Nintendo is not EA and they make quality games instead of rushed ports or something!!!


um what? 3rd parties have little to do with Nnty's forecasts. What games would have released that would have made Ninty meet their forecasts?

I believe that Nintendo thought that the 3rd party developers would this time make more games for the Nintendo Wii U than for the Nintendo Wii!!! And of course they consider such things in their forecasts ;)

well they were foolish to think so considering there were a LOT of games made for Wii which goes back to Xen's original point of not being able to read the market



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Purple on 11 January 2014
TheGhosts said:

Sorry, i am not joking ;) It was the same with the Nintendo 3DS. First everyone said the Nintendo 3DS is a failure, and after the Nintendo 3DS got more and more games the sales started to getting better. And you know how it is now ;) It's always about the games!!! The Nintendo Wii U just need more awesome games!!! It doesen't matter if the games are from Nintendo or 3rd party developers, as long as there are awesome everything will be fine ;)

I admire your optimism but I wouldn't hold your breath. Gamecube sales would be a good recovery for the Wii U.



Mr Khan on 11 January 2014
Max King of the Wild said:
Purple said:
Nintendo never believed they'd hit those targets. Setting high targets gives investors the illusion that you are selling a product that will be highly desired by the market. When Nintendo fails to hit those targets, Iwata will make some lame excuses and make it seem like the only reason they failed to hit those targets is some outside factor beyond their control.

You'll hear some absolute gems come then end of the financial year. Iwata will definitely blame Western markets (this plays well with the xenophobia of Japanese investors) and don't be surprised if the old 'bad weather' excuse comes out again. He'll then apologize and pretend that the company will learn from its mistakes.


nice hypothesis but the negativity and backlash of missing the forcast greatly outweigh the illusions 

Agree. You don't want to lowball too badly to show a lack of confidence in your product, but to vastly overestimate makes you seem deluded, unless there's something political at play in terms of Japanese investor relations that i don't know of.

The bigger question here is that Nintendo's been making way off-base predictions for like 3 years now. I don't get how they're still getting away with it.



Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.

Slarvax on 11 January 2014
Max King of the Wild said:
Slarvax said:

Thaaaaat... would be hilarious! 

Now let's think about this for a second. Wii U sold about 3+ million in 45 days after launch (if I'm correct) and about 3.5 million at the end of fiscal year. So it kind of makes sense that they expected about 9 million. A lot of "system sellers" (as shown in the present, that didn't work) were releasing, so if they sold about a third of their goal in less than two months, it would've made sense to do that three times in 12 months.

Of course, they didn't expect to get such a long drought and that their games would not boost the numbers, or that their hardware wasn't so anti-buyme, so I would say they were delusional.

Nintendo sold 3.06 at the end Dec then .39 at the end of march. terrible drop off which pointed to lower than 9mil sales. ESPECIALLY, since Nintendo missed their forcast by 2.05 already

Yeah, that actually made me feel bad. I wouldn't invest in a company that misses their (already lowered) sales forecast. How is Nintendo bigger than Sony again?



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Max King of the Wild on 11 January 2014
Mr Khan said:

Agree. You don't want to lowball too badly to show a lack of confidence in your product, but to vastly overestimate makes you seem deluded, unless there's something political at play in terms of Japanese investor relations that i don't know of.

The bigger question here is that Nintendo's been making way off-base predictions for like 3 years now. I don't get how they're still getting away with it.

Have they really been as bad as this though? It hasnt really come to my attention until this year (and somewhat last year)



Purple on 11 January 2014
Mr Khan said:
Max King of the Wild said:
Purple said:
Nintendo never believed they'd hit those targets. Setting high targets gives investors the illusion that you are selling a product that will be highly desired by the market. When Nintendo fails to hit those targets, Iwata will make some lame excuses and make it seem like the only reason they failed to hit those targets is some outside factor beyond their control.

You'll hear some absolute gems come then end of the financial year. Iwata will definitely blame Western markets (this plays well with the xenophobia of Japanese investors) and don't be surprised if the old 'bad weather' excuse comes out again. He'll then apologize and pretend that the company will learn from its mistakes.


nice hypothesis but the negativity and backlash of missing the forcast greatly outweigh the illusions 

Agree. You don't want to lowball too badly to show a lack of confidence in your product, but to vastly overestimate makes you seem deluded, unless there's something political at play in terms of Japanese investor relations that i don't know of.

The bigger question here is that Nintendo's been making way off-base predictions for like 3 years now. I don't get how they're still getting away with it.

As I mentioned above, it's been going on way longer than 3 years. It has to be a business strategy. I can't see any other reasonable explanation.

Edit: I think it's based on the theory that exaggerating sales expectations gets new investors on board and share prices go up. When they fail to meet these expectations, share holders are reluctant to sell because people don't want to sell when shares are falling (better to hold on and sell when the share price goes up).