Topic: Nintendo Posts Healthy Financials

[Gahiggidy]

Earns $451 Million (April-September), Increases DS Shipments to 5M, Year-End Forecasts Raised, Buys Seattle Mariners

Nintendo Raises Annual Profit Forecast on DS Demand

Bloomberg is reporting this morning that Nintendo is raising its annual profit and sales forecasts on the heels of a successful Nintendo DS launch.  The company is forecasting a Net income of 90 billion yen ($876 million) from sales of 540 billion yen for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2005.

In addition to an improving bottom-line, Nintendo is raising its unit sales forecast of Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance product lines.  Nintendo now expects the sales of Nintendo DS to reach 5 million by March 31 along with 16 million Game Boy Advance SP units, up from previous forecasts of 4 million and 14 million respectively.  In addition, shipment forecast of GBA software have risen to 77 million units from an earlier estimate of 70 million.  Shipments of DS software are expected to reach 15 million units.

Gamecube forecasts are less rosy, with 4.5 million hardware units predicted to ship for the fiscal year, down from 5.02 million which shipped in FY 2004.  Likewise, Gamecube software shipment forecasts are down from the previous year, 45 million for the 12 months ending March 31, compared to 47 million in FY 2004.

In an interesting side-note, Nintendo has increased its investment in the Seattle Mariners Major League Baseball team and is now the majority stakeholder with over 50% ownership of the franchise.

[GaimeGuy]

That's a lot of money

[VideoGamerJ]

Very awesome.

[Knoxxville]

YEA!  C'mon Ninty.....gimme my dividends!!

[nickmitch]

Why more GBA SP's?

[Deguello]

Because people want one for each hand and possibly a foot.

[Mario]

Nintendo is doomed

[NWR_Lindy]

yeah they're toast

[Gamefreak]

You know the Mariners thing isn't really what it seems. It's not like Nintendo bought a stake of the Mariners from some outside party. Yamauchi just shold his enormous stake to Nintendo of America. I mean that's not exactly a major sale. It's like if Bill Gates sold something to Microsoft.

Yamauchi just probably got pissed at the Mariners and wanted to sell them for some pocket money, but of course he had to keep the team under Nintendo control, so he just game them to NOA, which will probably now start to make money off of Mariners advertising.

[ruby_onix]

Yeah, Yamauchi personally bought over 50% of the Seattle Mariners at the request of Minoru Arakawa (Yamauchi's son-in-law and former-president/founder of the Seattle-based Nintendo of America) way back when they were going bankrupt and needed local investors to keep the team in Seattle. It was mentioned in Game Over.

It probably has to do with all those go and poetry societies, and animation studios, and Fund-Qs, and whatever all else that Yamauchi seems to be starting up lately.

He was probably looking over his assets to see how much more he could invest in things, and said to himself...

"Waitaminute, why do I own an American baseball team? Oh yeah, I bought that for Minoru. So why isn't this thing in his office? Oh, he can't afford it? Retired? Bah! He's a big man. Used to be a president. Not as big as me of course, but that's not saying much. His old company can buy it for him. They've got money. Why didn't he embezzle it? Stupid kids these days. I have to go and do everything myself. You there! Gimme NOA's bank account numbers and a phone! No, not there! Those are patents! Moron. Look in the top shelf on the right! There you go! What? Do you want a medal or something? Get lost already. I've got work to do. Get me a coffee if you're bored."

[MaleficentOgre]

yamauchi sold it because he knows that he's going to die.  Either of old age, or angry nintendo fans that want his chokehold on iwata to be gone.

[Gamefreak]

Howard Lincoln (former NOA bigwig, and one of the main guys who brought NOA to power) retired from NOA at around the same time Yamauchi "retired" as president of NCL. Seeing that the now retired Lincoln had nothing to do, Yamauchi gave Lincoln the chairmanship of the Mariners, because Yamauchi himself is too lazy to actually pay attention to the Mariners himself. He's never actually even seen one of their games in person.
Two seasons ago the opening game of the MLB was supposed to be Mariners vs. someone over at the huge stadium in Tokyo, and I remember Yamauchi said something about how he is finally going to be able to see that team he owned and what that Ichiro character was all about. But then the MLB cancelled that because they were afraid terrorists were going to shoot down the planes with the players as they are going to Japan. The opening game was relocated to Atlanta Braves vs. someone here in Georgia. In fact, I was there because I'm in our high school marching band (i'm the percussion leader this year) and we played during the game. While I'm on the subject, I'd just like to add that I'm graduating this year and it really sucks because next year the band is going to Hawaii.

[kirby_killer_dedede]

I see this Mariners thing turning into a huge marketing thing for Mario Baseball.

[Nephilim]

I thought that Yamauchi had a passion for baseball and thats why he bought the team.
Its what I heard from the early years of myself owning a N64 up till now, I heard he was really upset that they didnt play in japan also.....

which is quite opposite to what you guys are saying

Anyway its good that they bought the team, it means that he wont be parst down to a relative who might destroy the team, and the fact Ichiro Suzuki was on the japanese gamecube ads, means they keep there icon
Just as michael klim was for nintendo australia 4years ago.