Sigh, it's not even worth explaining business to fanboys. It's like wasted breath.

Wow, the Sony fanboys came out in full force for this one, lol. I've never seen a demographic of gamer argue so veamently against reality. 

@fishyjoe: agreed. fanboys are willing to display their utter lack of education just to fight back.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6193002.html

http://www.themoneytimes.com/articles/20070625/nintendo_surpasses_rival_sony_in_market_value-id-105311.html

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/06/24/nintendo.sony.reut/index.html

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article2710684.ece

Relevant text: Nintendo shares rose as high as 46,350 yen (£187.65), a record, boosting its market value to 6.57 trillion yen and narrowly surpassing Sony's market capitalisation for a time, before settling lower. The achievement is extraordinary because, where Nintendo is a pure gaming company, Sony is a multinational entertainment and consumer electronics conglomerate whose interests run from movie studios to mobile phones.

It really isn't a matter of wanting, frankly. 

Even when Sony was dominating the market, their games division was making less money than Nintendo was, because Nintendo continued to dominate the hand held market and because Sony took such drastic price cuts and lost so much money on the console itself. So if Nintendo was already making more money when Sony was dominant and they were marginalized, imagine the disparity when that situation is reversed.

Just remember that this has little to do with the actual gaming experience of the consumers. Just because Nintendo makes more money does NOT mean that Sony cannot get great games and, for that matter, doesn't preclude them from winning the generation; again, just look at last generation. All this means is that Nintendo makes more money.

 Thanks Bod, for applying a healthy dose of logic to a topic that seemed to have lost all hope lol.

@Bod:

wow, impressive work. all these links you managed to dig up.

the most common determination of companies in terms of size is market cap. it fluctuates, it has many humans factors built in and it's not perfect, but if you want to compare across different industries it has the advantage of simple, elegant, easy to understand and few people would spend time arguing against using it.

the mere fact that nintendo can even be mentioned in the same league as sony is impressive. that's really what most people are after here.

nintendo has what, 4000 employees worldwide? sony, what, 100,000? it's utterly ming-boggling. with all those divisions, movies, eletronics, hardware, computer, games, and all those added up can't match one nintendo. that, is what we gawk at. it's a david vs goliath, and david won.

can it last? who knows. sony is coming a comeback itself; because for a company its size, it's embarassing to have its market cap eclipsed by nintendo, and shareholders still aren't happy (though in the past 2 years its stock is up 70%). it's an interesting fight--a fight much tighter than anybody expected it to be.

The general fact that they passed Sony makes no sense. Sony makes way more products that Nintendo doesnt. Sony makes computers, TVs, CD Players, Movies, owns a music company, makes car audio, stereos, game consoles, and handhelds. Nintendo made board games (do they still do this?) then moved to consoles and handhelds. Nintendo's stock is nothing more then inflated stock that will crash down like the Chinese stock market eventually.

Based on fanboy valuation, GM would be worth more than Google.

I'm just glad I don't take investment advice from fanboys, otherwise I'd be flat broke.

Any dumbass can put a fast processor, fast memory, and an expensive disc drive together and call it console. Its alot harder to come up with an original idea, and then make billions with it.

Hey vizunary, you're by confession a banker (but not of the "wanker" kind - haha) - why not shed some light into this? You should have a fairly good understanding of how markets work - at least better than the average poster here.

I'd be really interested if you could substantiate your statement. Not that I don't believe you, but it would be nice to see how you perceive it.