Nintendo said in their recent earnings call that the only reason they don't currently have a loss is because of foreign currency exchange rates changing unexpectedly.
Also, your "it's Nintendo" isn't very reassuring to investors. The "Nintendo" that people are so confident in would never have gotten into a situation where they'd have lost money on a product in the first place.
Hm... I doubt it. PSP redesign?
^ Nintendo planned for 3DS to sell at a profit. It didn't, because people didn't want it at that price. So they had to cut the price and sell it at a loss. That's NOT what you're talking about when you say "what seems to be a loss is just a normal part of the fluctuating process of creation." That's Nintendo producing a failed marketing mix for a major product.
Incidentally, investors see the same thing happening with Wii U - which is why Nintend...
Apparently there IS a problem with not having the most wanted games at launch, because Nintendo posted its first ever loss after that happened to 3DS, and Iwata is making outrageous promises and even putting his job on the line so investors don't abandon Nintendo.
Meanwhile, which game is Square-Enix's most profitable title ever?
I've been wondering for awhile how many holdouts there are for this version. I mean, I never expected it to sell gangbusters - I figured it'd make money through subscription fees - but I feel like the Wii sales were kinda held back...
It's one of those things to which I'd have to say "eventually." But if they're thinking of putting it on other next-gen platforms, the risk seems like it'd be about the same for both those platforms and Wii U. It'd be a good way of offering what obviously looks like it's planned to be a huge brand to a wide audience.
Attach rates are one thing, but it really bites Nintendo in the butt when they come at the cost of a install base. GameCube had the best attach rate of any Nintendo platform, but also an AWFULLY small install base.
Games are being made at about the same pace now that they were in the 80s and the beginning of the SNES era (if anything, they were coming out FASTER in the 80s), with the main difference that there are two platforms for them to appear on.
Mr. Iwata said there will be only one NSMB game per generation. Unless he was lying, this is the big 2D Mario game for Wii U. But yes, it's also still a quick launch game that didn't have much thought put into it... and that's the problem.
I'd love to believe there'll be more bigger and better games to come... but I'm just not seeing it with the way Nintendo has been treating the series.
Land 1-3 weren't ports.
Country was first ported 6 YEARS later, not 3 years later.
etc.
Wii U is currently selling in the less than 10k weekly range in the U.S.
That's AWFUL.
Nintendo.
"Sometimes we say what Wii Sports was for Wii, Nintendo Land is for Wii U, except... [there's] a lot more than what was available in Wii Sports. We want people to know that this is a full game."
There is seriously no good PR coming out of this. Do they really think this is going to be a good idea in either the short-term or the long-term?
It could use an aggressive price cut alongside the next round of major first-party titles. I wonder if they're planning to reveal a price drop at PlayStation 2013? Give the little handheld a kind of re-launch in a sense, kind of like the DS Lite, but maybe a less significant hardware iteration/brand upgrade.
It is never, ever, ever the customers' fault. Ever.
The fact that Wii was flying off shelves with Wii Sports bundled kind of proves it was a system seller, no?
Sly Cooper, Persona 4, LBP Vita, Soul Sacrifice - system sellers?
Come on, does anyone know what those look like anymore?
Did you read the article? Nintendo explicitly said that this is their way of protecting the re-sale of digital goods.
That's the textbook definition of DRM.
Killzone looks great, but has never been a major system seller for Sony, and I don't expect it to start now. Same for inFAMOUS.
Knack looks like it's banking hard on the "made by the guy who made Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter" thing without actually really capturing what made those games great.
Driveclub has a lot of potential, but for some reason I feel like it's meeting a need that's actually already met (by GT). There have ...