Topic: Investors Heavily Criticize Nintendo's Performance

[Shaymin]

SalesBot will hopefully confirm this shortly, but one of the top 10 best selling games of last month in the US was New Super Mario Bros. A 5 year old game brought in ~$2.5 million in revenue to the company.

Try doing *that* on a cell phone. (Spoilers: You can't)

[LittleIrves]

I agree with what the vast majority of you here are saying...  please no don't do it (but they're not going to do it, anyway).

The same investors in 1986 might have said, This NES thing needs a VHS player. It even looks like it could play them...  you're missing the next evolution in home entertainment!

In 1996: Use CDs not cartridges! (Well, they might have been right about that one....)

In 2006: The Wii doesn't have a DVD player!? Craziness!

Okay, maybe the analogy isn't quite right, but the general idea is that a lot of people think they know what Nintendo should do based on short-term trends. But the Big N has been a force in the market for nearly 30 years and that's no accident. Sure the market is changing, but it's changed before. Let's not get all carried away and follow the leader after being one for decades.

[Chozo Ghost]

The investors should be criticizing Nintendo for abandoning the Wii and not giving it the software support that it could and should have.

[ShyGuy]

Nintendo should open themselves to porting games to my microwave, it has better controls than the iPhone.

[Chocobo_Rider]

Nintendo should open themselves to porting games to my microwave, it has better controls than the iPhone.

Oh my god, best line ever.

That might show up in a sig of mine down the road.... you'll get credit of course. ^_^

[Ceric]

Nintendo should open themselves to porting games to my microwave, it has better controls than the iPhone.

Oh my god, best line ever.

That might show up in a sig of mine down the road.... you'll get credit of course. ^_^

And its totally True too.

[couchmonkey]

The request to put games on mobile phones is idiotic but investors have a right to be angry with Nintendo: 3DS is performing horribly.  It's not just because of phones, either, since regular DS and PSP were regularly outselling 3DS prior to the recent price drop.
 
At the same time, Nintendo seems to have squandered the potential of the Wii (went from best-selling system ever to having trouble keeping up with PS3 and Xbox 360) and so far Wii U appears to reject the philosophy that made Wii popular.
 
Personally, I owned Nintendo stock until earlier this year; thank God I dumped it just before 3DS launched.

[Chozo Ghost]

The request to put games on mobile phones is idiotic but investors have a right to be angry with Nintendo

They have a right to be angry. The problem is they are being angry for the wrong reasons. They are angry because Nintendo doesn't support gaming on mobile phones, but what they should be angry with is NOA's decision not to bring Wii games like Xenoblade over to North America and the severe drought that the Wii is suffering from which should not be happening and which Nintendo themselves even promised would not happen. That's what the investors should be pissed off about.

[nickmitch]

The problem here is that the investors are trying to run the company the way things are done by the more infamous US CEOs. They just want the stock price to go up. Short term sales do that. They don't really care about the long term growth of the company. They just want Nintendo to give in to popular things because they are popular. What they forget is that since Nintendo basically resurrected this industry, they've pretty much been deciding what's popular.

[Chocobo_Rider]

3DS is performing horribly.

As expected? No. Horribly? Also no.

The request to put games on mobile phones is idiotic but investors have a right to be angry with Nintendo

um, were all the printing money jokes between 2004 and now complete BS? I mean, that did happen right? No one just dreamed it, right?

Assuming it did happen, seems like the investors would be pretty pleased with past results and should probably stfu in the meantime =P
... just my take on the situation.

[Ceric]

Stocks are nothing more then paid opinion polls.  Clear and simple.

[Mop it up]

Nintendo have had a bad year, and a lot of it is unfortunately due to their own bad decisions. All I can hope for is that they learned from their mistakes. And we all know how it can sometimes take a while before they learn, or they can even learn the wrong lesson from something. If I were an investor I'd be weary of Nintendo too, because there is no guarantee they've learned from the 3DS and will successfully launch the Wii U. I'm hopeful, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[Chozo Ghost]

Nintendo have had a bad year, and a lot of it is unfortunately due to their own bad decisions.

All their success went to their head and they became arrogant and that's why they priced the 3DS so grossly in excess of what it cost them to manufacture it. Arrogance was why Sony dropped from number 1 to number 3 in a very short period of time. Nintendo needs to be very careful because the same thing could happen to them. Fortunately, I think this 3DS thing might have taught them a lesson before it is too late. I hope they learn from that lesson....

[Adrock]

If investors told Apple to license OSX or iOS to other companies, Steve Jobs would personally backhand each and every one of them. The reason: it devalues the company's bottomline. The same principle applies here. If Nintendo puts their games on tablets and smartphones, they pretty much shoot themselves in the foot because their entire business model revolves around selling compelling software to sell their hardware. You simply cannot get Nintendo games anywhere but Nintendo console/handhelds (or you're not supposed to... damn, pirates).

Ignoring the fact that 3DS and smartphone games are 2 entirely different experiences, the thing I don't understand is that investors are claiming that iOS and Android games are moving in on Nintendo's territory so the investors' brilliant solution is for Nintendo to support those platforms and be in direct competition with themselves. Investors want Nintendo to give a cut of their profits to Apple, Google etc. to help destroy their own platform. What the f...?

[SixthAngel]

The request to put games on mobile phones is idiotic but investors have a right to be angry with Nintendo.

But they got angry and said things after the price drop.  Nintendo just did something about the problem and what they did seems to be the entire reason they suddenly care about the problem.  These investors are 100% reactionary.

That is why Nintendo shouldn't and won't listen to them.

[Chocobo_Rider]

All their success went to their head and they became arrogant and that's why they priced the 3DS so grossly in excess of what it cost them to manufacture it.

I disagree. The joy-gasmic reaction from E3 2010 determined the price of the 3DS.  Remember, at the time, people were half-jokingly encouraging each other to temper their excitement for fear that it would jack up the retail price.  Turns out they shouldn't have been joking at all. =P

Also, if memory serves correctly, the PSP Go debuted at $250 and that was essentially just a (worse) iteration.  So $250 for a brand new  platform with never-seen-before technology? Doesn't seem all that bad in relation to the competition.  Heck, throw mobile phones into the equation... some of their prices dwarf $250.

Now, for me, $250 was still too much.  So I agree it was a high price.  But it wasn't arrogance that determined it... it was market research.

[Mop it up]

But it wasn't arrogance that determined it... it was market research.

Although I agree it isn't arrogance, I wouldn't call it research. Nintendo didn't ask anyone what they would pay for a 3DS. Since Nintendo are known for affordably pricing their systems, I think people expected it to be $200 at the absolute maximum. If they had known the price, they'd have likely been more skeptical and mentioned that it was overpriced. Though the E3 crowd doesn't represent the average consumer anyway, so they aren't a good group on whcih to base certain decisions.

[TJ Spyke]

Actually, they did ask people at E3 what they would pay for the 3DS, which was part of what caused them to raise the price to $250. Yes that's not a large group statistically speaking, they do tend to represent hardcore gamers (though hardcore gamers were not the majority of DS owners).

[Mop it up]

They did? I don't recall that. Got a link?

[TJ Spyke]

Hmm, I have been checking and it doesn't look like they asked what price, but the excitement for the 3DS at E3 did lead to the pricing.

[shainentinpock]

I really hope they don't go on and develop ios games. I really don't find games on my phone to be fun. They all seem to play like angry birds. It's a fun diversion but it's not a game. Hopefully after the Nintendo 3ds price, Nintendo will be back in the game. The software lineup for the 3ds this holiday season looks great. I wish they waited to launch the Nintendo 3ds until they had the software.

[Chozo Ghost]

I disagree. The joy-gasmic reaction from E3 2010 determined the price of the 3DS.  Remember, at the time, people were half-jokingly encouraging each other to temper their excitement for fear that it would jack up the retail price.  Turns out they shouldn't have been joking at all. =P

I don't see where you are disagreeing with me. The reaction at E3 2010 fed into the arrogance or whatever you want to call it. Maybe over-confidence would be a nicer word for it? But I don't think it can be denied that the enormous success of the DS (and Wii) was also a factor in the pricing.

[Mop it up]

But I don't think it can be denied that the enormous success of the DS (and Wii) was also a factor in the pricing.

If that's the case, then they ignored one of the reasons the Wii and DS are successful, which is affordability. Plus, some people probably just bought a DSi for $150-190, and didn't want to spend even more money on another handheld. What I think happened is that Nintendo knew they were going to have low profits this year due to the lack of compelling Wii and DS software for a majority of it, so they wanted to get as much profit as they could from the 3DS which caused them to release it before it was ready at a high price.

[Chozo Ghost]

If that's the case, then they ignored one of the reasons the Wii and DS are successful, which is affordability.

Precisely. That is exactly the mistake Sony made also when they priced the PS3 at $600. Sony mistakenly and arrogantly believed that because of how popular the PS2 was consumers would buy the PS3 at any price. Well, they learned the hard way that that wasn't the case, and they went from 1st place to 3rd as a result. It was only after the PS3 dropped to a more affordable $299 that sales started to pick up.

Nintendo's mistake with the 3DS was similar but not as fatal and more easily reversible than the PS3's problem was, because in the PS3's case even at $600 it was selling at a loss, but the 3DS was selling at a huge profit so Nintendo could afford to cut the price with no problem. The 3DS was also fortunate that the Vita was a long way off so its blunder wasn't so bad because there was no competition to deal with.

[ThePerm]

people are fickle idiots. Nintendo will make 3ds a success in the same way they made Wii and Ds a success. The 3ds could always have some firmware changes that make it adapt to the market. Cell Phone games sales are an example of a fad. How many shitty games can you purchase before you're tired of it? Just because their selling now doesnt mean they'll be selling in the future. This is like what happened during the Atari game industry collapse...exactly what happened. People will eat their words when a crapton of Resident Evil looking games end up on 3ds, whether Nintendo has to money hat them or not.