i never understand why nintendo want "more people to own the stock".  yes, it's exorbitantly expensive to own nintendo in japan, but i have no problems with insitutions doing the trading.  it only adds to the volatility, which i don't like.  it could give a small boost to the stock price, but there's really little basis. 

i've totally been hoping nintendo surprise investors with a move into hardware, striking it while the iron is hot.  an alliance with apple seem unlikely at this point... but i stand to be pleasantly surprised.

I am not sure if there is a "strong" reason. Nintendo like to promote themselves as a caring, family company - and would like families to be able to invest in them I suspect.

It would also help build (further) brand loyalty, and may even drive sales higher - if I owned a bunch of Ninty shares, I would be a lot less worried about spending even more money on games.

...

I'm hopeful Nintendo have something awesome in the wings, that none of us are expecting. I wonder if it would be viable for MS to release something like the MS Surface "as a console" (yes, at $5k/pop). I can see a lot of hard-core gamers purchasing one - I would be a lot more excited about something like that, than say spending 1/10th the money on a PS3. 

yeah, i guess if people own nintendo stock they would feel better about buying games... like how people used to own stocks of man united.  i wonder if they turn out to be "good investments"?  

i have no idea how big that effect is.

I for one hate pinksheets. They don't share their real time data with anyone. Their information sucks. I just don't think it's a very good place to trade and nobody trusts them. Going to a major exchange would would be a huge improvement. The trust factor alone would bump the stock up.

I think having more small investors increases liquidity and decreases volatility. One of the problems with buying and selling, especially on pinksheets, is matching. With such low volume you get huge bid/ask spreads which increases volatility. When a institution comes along and trades a big block the price becomes completely erratic because there are so few buyers and sellers.

well, most of nintendo stock is traded in japan anyway... but i guess for a company like nintendo the cost is negligible to get traded on nasdaq or nyse and they might be thinking "why not?"

but you're right, pinksheet doesn't give people much faith.

oh my god, if a $5,000 microsoft console came out, that'd be like the ferrari of gaming consoles. (4,000 people total would own one, lol)

oh yeah, i just realized, apple is the most valuable among the consumer electronics makers, with about the market cap of Nintendo and Sony combined.

i mean, no one can argue with a straight face that apple makes computers for a living... even themselves--reflected in the apple inc name change from apple computer.

The new MacBook pro is pretty sweet though. A new iMac is coming this summer as well, that's what I'm waiting for. I sooooo want to get rid of all these cables and boxes around my desk.

these days it's like nothing is going wrong for apple. and i thought $60 was expensive, again at $80, at $100... oh well.