Topic: Nintendo Posts Largest Net Loss in History

[King of Twitch]

No blame for the tsunami?

[ejamer]

The poor exchange rate is definitely the best explanation I've heard for Europe getting the games and NA not getting them.

Weren't the exchange rates worse for Europe than NA, though? And small profit from releasing niche games (and supporting what is left of your core audience) is better than no profit from releasing nothing.


The only explanations that I can see really being viable are:
(1) Nintendo doesn't count small successes, so the risk didn't outweigh the reduced profits
(2) NoA was too busy with other tasks... but since there hasn't been any other games to support and 3DS hasn't even received that big of a campaign, I can't imagine what has kept them so busy that they couldn't get small print runs of a couple games pushed out the door.

[Chozo Ghost]

Sony recently reported that PSN sales were up 14% in the months following the PSN hack (and Sony's had a good retail software year).

If that's true that is unfortunate, because heaven knows they don't deserve it after the **** they pulled.

[Ceric]

Nintendo's kind of in a weird spot with the 3DS.  Smartphones have it beat in terms of practical functionality, and Vita has it beat in terms of extra features that might appeal to the smartphone market.  It has all of them beat in price (generally, unless you buy an older phone), but I'm not so sure that's what customers are looking at first and foremost these days.

Let me ask this: would any of you 3DS owners give the system to a 7-year-old, or is it too fragile?  There's no way in hell I would have given the PSP to a kid, but the DS was unbreakable.

I let my 3 Year old use it all the time as a camera and he sometimes try to play games.

...
A few other notes is alot of money was spent on re-amping the 3DS--Nintendo spent another 300 million on new commericals/ads whatnot and that alone makes up the loss for the year.
...

Really?  I don't think I've seen a single ad or commercial for the 3DS.  I've seen ones for the DS though.  That's some real Marketing fail.

[ejamer]

Nintendo's kind of in a weird spot with the 3DS.  Smartphones have it beat in terms of practical functionality, and Vita has it beat in terms of extra features that might appeal to the smartphone market.  It has all of them beat in price (generally, unless you buy an older phone), but I'm not so sure that's what customers are looking at first and foremost these days.

Let me ask this: would any of you 3DS owners give the system to a 7-year-old, or is it too fragile?  There's no way in hell I would have given the PSP to a kid, but the DS was unbreakable.

I let my 3 Year old use it all the time as a camera and he sometimes try to play games.

...

Yeah, my 18-month old girl plays with my 3DS some of the time. Always supervised, and her playing is limited to PiCTOBiTS (usually the music player) or watching Go Diego Go! on Netflix... but the 3DS doesn't seem to be significantly more fragile than our old DS Lite was.

[Shaymin]

Sony recently reported that PSN sales were up 14% in the months following the PSN hack (and Sony's had a good retail software year).

If that's true that is unfortunate, because heaven knows they don't deserve it after the **** they pulled.

It's going to be up 15% after I get done with it at Christmas. Of course, I'm using a disposable e-mail, and a prepaid credit card or PSN cards. Do I win?

[Chozo Ghost]

Sony recently reported that PSN sales were up 14% in the months following the PSN hack (and Sony's had a good retail software year).

If that's true that is unfortunate, because heaven knows they don't deserve it after the **** they pulled.

It's going to be up 15% after I get done with it at Christmas. Of course, I'm using a disposable e-mail, and a prepaid credit card or PSN cards. Do I win?

When you support the dark side everyone loses.

[NWR_insanolord]

The poor exchange rate is definitely the best explanation I've heard for Europe getting the games and NA not getting them.

Weren't the exchange rates worse for Europe than NA, though? And small profit from releasing niche games (and supporting what is left of your core audience) is better than no profit from releasing nothing.


The only explanations that I can see really being viable are:
(1) Nintendo doesn't count small successes, so the risk didn't outweigh the reduced profits
(2) NoA was too busy with other tasks... but since there hasn't been any other games to support and 3DS hasn't even received that big of a campaign, I can't imagine what has kept them so busy that they couldn't get small print runs of a couple games pushed out the door.

Profit would in no way be guaranteed. There is a very real chance they would lose money by releasing those games in North America, and looking at the figures in this article shows that it's not really a good time for Nintendo to be doing things with such a chance to lose money and so little upside. The better exchange-rate-to-price ratio in Europe makes it less of a risk there, which may be why they got it and we didn't

[Shaymin]

When you support the dark side everyone loses.

Nice to see that wanting to play the Persona games suddenly makes me part of the 1%.

[broodwars]

When you support the dark side everyone loses.

Nice to see that wanting to play the Persona games suddenly makes me part of the 1%.

I sure hope that's Persona 2 and 3 you want to play, because I have Persona 1 on PSP and it is pretty "blah" overall.  I've heard Persona 2 is better, but Personas 3 and 4 are awesome.

[Ymeegod]

"There is a very real chance they would lose money by releasing those games in North America,"

?  No, they wouldn't.  For one they don't have to spend any money on ads because the games are hardcore and those types of gamers already know what's coming.  Two, the can print small builds and since this is an NINTENDO published game then they wouldn't have to pay the royalites like third party games.  All the work is already finished.

If a third party like atlus can make profits will low sales and paying royalites I'm sure Nintendo could have. 

Rough look at the money involved--it's basically $25 ish the publisher takes in out of an $50 game and this type of game would sell easily 100k in but lets use 50K instead.  That's an million bucks for an game that's already BUILT.  Yeah I can if it was localized but that's not the case at all.

[Kytim89]

"There is a very real chance they would lose money by releasing those games in North America,"

?  No, they wouldn't.  For one they don't have to spend any money on ads because the games are hardcore and those types of gamers already know what's coming.  Two, the can print small builds and since this is an NINTENDO published game then they wouldn't have to pay the royalites like third party games.  All the work is already finished.

If a third party like atlus can make profits will low sales and paying royalites I'm sure Nintendo could have. 

Rough look at the money involved--it's basically $25 ish the publisher takes in out of an $50 game and this type of game would sell easily 100k in but lets use 50K instead.  That's an million bucks for an game that's already BUILT.  Yeah I can if it was localized but that's not the case at all.

If Nintendo had realized this six months ago then their money woes might have not been so bad.

[broodwars]

Yeah, let's not kid ourselves: the Rainfall games would not be huge sellers on par with something like Mario Kart Wii, but they could probably sell 50,000 - 100,000 copies easily with minimal marketing (as if Nintendo of America knows how to do anything else for core-oriented titles).  Assuming that Nintendo of America got a clue and kept the localizations as they were in Europe, costs could be kept to pretty much replication; distribution; and viral marketing.  Unless we had the second coming of Demon's Souls, the titles wouldn't be mega-hits, but they'd probably do respectively and turn Nintendo a small profit.  Nintendo doesn't get a pass on "not wanting to sell niche titles" when small companies like Atlus and Nippon-Ichi USA have turned that into an art form.

And at this point, is Nintendo really in a position to be picky about how it gets money after posting their first annual net loss since the 1980s?

[Kytim89]

Yeah, let's not kid ourselves: the Rainfall games would not be huge sellers on par with something like Mario Kart Wii, but they could probably sell 50,000 - 100,000 copies easily with minimal marketing (as if Nintendo of America knows how to do anything else for core-oriented titles).  Assuming that Nintendo of America got a clue and kept the localizations as they were in Europe, costs could be kept to pretty much replication; distribution; and viral marketing.  Unless we had the second coming of Demon's Souls, the titles wouldn't be mega-hits, but they'd probably do respectively and turn Nintendo a small profit.  Nintendo doesn't get a pass on "not wanting to sell niche titles" when small companies like Atlus and Nippon-Ichi USA have turned that into an art form.

And at this point, is Nintendo really in a position to be picky about how it gets money after posting their first annual net loss since the 1980s?

Someone told me a while agao that Nintendo is too risk advers to release these games in north America after postingtheir first financial loss in decades. I would argue that risk is simply a part of doing business and that Nintendo must realize that they could have easily made some money by releasing these games and saved themselves. Bottom line is that these games will be released in north America in 2012 they would not dissapoint either the fans or Nintendo themselves.

[NWR_insanolord]

The way to do it, though, would be to actually have Atlus do it. I'm sure they'd jump at the chance to publish these games, and it would eliminate all risk on Nintendo's part if they just let Atlus (or XSEED or whomever) buy the rights for them on the cheap.

[broodwars]

The way to do it, though, would be to actually have Atlus do it. I'm sure they'd jump at the chance to publish these games, and it would eliminate all risk on Nintendo's part if they just let Atlus (or XSEED or whomever) buy the rights for them on the cheap.

Sure, Atlus would love to sell these games to the Atlus Faithful, but NoA just strikes me as petty with this: they don't think they can make money on these titles, so they need to make sure that no one else can have a chance to prove them wrong.  Because they are Nintendo, and they can never be wrong about anything.   

[UncleBob]

It's not a case of being petty - it's a case of near absolute-control over Nintendo IPs - something Nintendo is *very* big on... and with good reason.

[Chozo Ghost]

Even if Nintendo lost money by releasing those titles in North America, in a worst case scenario what they would lose would be such a piddly amount that what would it matter? After all the billions Nintendo has printed since 2006 they could afford to risk losing some chump change on a few titles.

I understand not wanting to take MAJOR risks, but its not like releasing these games is going to cause Nintendo to go bankrupt or anything.

[MegaByte]

Since the Euro is stronger then the dollar, games in Europe don't need to sell as much as they would in America in order to make profit, which would explain why NOE has had no problem releasing more games during this same time.

Except that premise isn't true. The euro is not doing well either with respect to the yen, and it hasn't changed significantly against the dollar in the past year (they've both been up and down).

[Chozo Ghost]

Maybe there should be some global currency thing so that no one would ever have to mess with exchange rates and all that crap.

[Shaymin]

Even if there was one global currency, it wouldn't be allowed in the US because your religious right would flip their ****, AND THAT'S AS FAR AS WE CAN GO WITH THIS LINE OF DISCUSSION.

[stevey]

Maybe there should be some global currency thing so that no one would ever have to mess with exchange rates and all that crap.

And who or whos would control that and at what oversight? Even ignoring that, just look at the Great Depression & Gold standard or the European sovereign debt crisis & the Euro for reason why linking all the economies of earth to a single point of failure is a very bad idea.

[Chozo Ghost]

But it would make things more simple and convenient.

[nickmitch]

And then absolutely terrible weeks later. The last thing the US economy needs is the currency futures market disappearing overnight.

[Chozo Ghost]

Isn't the dollar weak or something? Maybe the best thing to do is scrap the whole thing and start over with something fresh and new. As for who would control it, what about the U.N.? Every country on earth makes up the U.N. and they all have a say in it so in theory everyone would control it and it would be fair.