oh dear... Another article

from the piece:

"6. Nintendo is sitting on a lot of money/assets and has no outstanding debt. Doesn’t this clearly indicate they are not in trouble?

Answer: No, unfortunately. I am looking at current trends that Nintendo displayed. It is true they have a lot of money they are sitting on. But they are not going to spend a penny of it. Iwata said so himself:

“However, if we tried to do nothing but buying our way to create such a good condition for developers, our own business could collapse.” (source document, click here)

They plan on taking a specific action to try to turn things around, which will be discussed next."

Firstly, since when is having a crapload of money, assets and no debt suggest a company is in trouble. On the contrary it means they are in decent shape (that doesn't give nintendo and their fans an excuse to rest on their laurels) Sure, one section of their business is in trouble, but as a company they are ok - far from short term risks.

Secondly, the quote in which he claims that nintendo is not going to spend a penny is in regards to the bidding war and money-hatting 3rd party support. This position has been made clear many years ago - it is obvious they simply cannot win against Microsoft in a bidding war.

If the author actually did some research he would know, that Nintendo invested significantly in 2013 in R&D to cover their weakness. In fact it went up by 80% last year.

Source: http://www.siliconera.com/2...

From Iwata himself:

“Regarding the research and development expenses for this fiscal year, many people seem to have been surprised by such a sudden increase and I heard from the IR team that they received many questions on this topic from financial analysts,”

“Yesterday, I received the same question when we made our financial announcement at the Osaka Securities Exchange and answered that we decided to increase our forecasted expenses this fiscal year in order to tackle some of the areas that we feel we are not strong at, and this is an investment toward the future.”

“I will not, however, go into detail about these specific areas since doing so does not benefit Nintendo or our shareholders. Please also note that the rise is unique to this fiscal year and it does not signify a general rise for
the next fiscal year".

Therefore, I ask the author - isn't this proof that nintendo are spending their pennies? This is some indication that Nintendo are moving in the background to rejuvenate their business.

The article does have some good points, but the amount of spin is truly mind-boggling - the author isn't as intelligent as he think he is.

Goodness, can we give this topic a rest? Yes, everyone knows Nintendo can improve on a lot of things- but that can be said about every company! Can we just go one day without an article about "why the Wii U is doomed" or "where Nintendo went wrong"?

It's good to see some Nintendo fans on here for a change, usually every Nintendo article whether it's positive or negative is filled with Nintendo haters, mainly Sony fanboys.

OT Nintendo doesn't need saving, never has and never will. Wii U will remain my primary main console complimented by a ps4 for their 3rd party titles.

"Nintendo achieved there highest sales ever of core titles, catering more of there output to the core.

Mario titles sold more, Zelda sold more, smash sold more, even freaking fire emblem sold more."

I'm going to guess were talking about sales on the Wii, considering the context of that particular sub-thread. The Smash Bros. series absolutely had its best outing on the Wii, as Brawl sold 11.4 million copies. The rest of series you mentioned though did not. Zelda's best seller is still Ocarina of Time (7.06 million, next best being Twilight Princess). Mario's best is still the original Super Mario Bros.(40 million). Granted, that's a skewed number, as they were bundled with Nintendo's. So we will go with the next highest, New Super Mario Bros. (29.2 million), which is a DS game. I couldn't find many reliable numbers on the early Fire Emblems, but it doesn't matter, as the highest selling issue in the series is Awakening (1.24 million) and that came out last year on the 3DS.

So you know, there's that...

I just had a nap, awoke, and burped. I then picked my nose. And thus conclude I have single handedly saved Nintendo. I'm just going to call Nintendo now to let them know. I doubt they ever thought of this solution.

It's funny. Everybody nowdays seems to have a solution to save Nintendo... I guess they are all financial expert that can suggest a 100 old company with a lots of money what to do.

Good luck with that.

Release more cranky kong and mario games.

I've worked with software companies at a senior level for many years. The problem with the Wii U is obvious to those of us in the industry; Nintendo has obliquely addressed the issue.

The issue is that they are not running x86, which everyone else is, so it requires specialized coding. That costs $, and the base isn't big enough to spread the cost over. If Nintendo put all their platforms on the same system (this is what Nintendo obliquely referenced), they would have a larger base to spread the cost over.

Nintendo doesn't need to survey customers (unless this is strictly a marketing exercise)or 3rd party developers; they have a pretty good idea as to the issues.

Nintendo doesn't need saving. They DO need to change a few business practices or market focuses, but they're not in danger of going anywhere.

That said, the Wii U is a separate kettle of fish, entirely. It actually IS in need of a rather drastic and urgent turnaround, although it's not a difficult thing to implement.

Really? An article JUST came out YESTERDAY stating that Nintendo has enough money in the bank to last decades, but no, let's ignore the facts and continue with ridiculous Nintendoom.

Do they need to change their business structure? Big time, but they are NOWHERE NEAR the point of needing saving.

The Switch 2 is my favorite console, and I love that it's getting big 3rd party games. Yay!

These sales are absolute madness. Nintendo understood enough of the assignment.