Nintendo, the company gamers keep writing off, and a combination of eight-year-old boys and women old enough to be their moms keep turning into the most profitable company in the gaming industry. Between the DS and the Wii, Nintendo has been jumping on the heads of its competition and squashing them flat, but can that continue? And how will they follow up the Wii?
First, Nintendo sad, tragic struggling financially. OK, for them it’s sad and tragic, for the first time in a while, they didn’t make billions in profit. They fell fifty million shy of making $1 billion in profit.
Needless to say, most companies, being told they made nearly a billion dollars in profit on a reported $12.4 billion in annual sales, would be rocking the coke and hookers like Gordon Gekko was in town. This being Nintendo, it means their profit actually declined two-thirds.
The upcoming financial picture isn’t really that spectacular either. In what has to be the single biggest understatement, Nintendo mentioned that the earthquake/tsunami affecting Japan would probably ding their bottom line due to “decreased consumer spending”. Naw, really?
On the other hand, they did say they expected to move $13 billion of games, systems, and Pokemon crap, that the 3DS was selling well despite the belief that “Angry Birds” is all you need to declare an apocalypse in handheld gaming markets, and that the Wii would sell 13 million systems in the coming months. Oh, also that they were replacing the Wii next year.
What do we know about it? That it’s coming out in 2012. That’s it. Nintendo put out a three-paragraph statement announcing that, that we’ll see a prototype at E3 in June, and pretty much nothing else. But that hasn’t stopped people from speculating, or blatantly making $#!t up and passing it off as truth, even when they should really know better.
Here’s what the rumor mill has been turning out: claims that the system will start shipping in October, that it’ll cost between $350 and $400, and be more powerful than a PS3. Specifically, it’ll be based off AMD’s R700 GPU.
You know, because the Wii’s lack of processing power really hurt it the last generation. And Nintendo totally puts out systems costing over $300. Seriously, IGN? The company whose strategy has been, for years, to keep system prices at or below $250, is suddenly going to take a page from the Sony playbook?
Even better are the claims that Nintendo might eat the loss to sell the console at a lower price. Nintendo’s policy has been practically from the start to sell their systems at a profit for as long as humanly possible. This is why their making a billion dollars in profit is thought of as an off-year, guys.
Let’s not forget, Nintendo learns from the market, and what’s popular right now? Wii ripoffs. Yes, we know the fanboys are dreaming of the day when Nintendo realizes gaming is only for the hardcore and not that stupid wider market with all its stupid money, but that day ain’t coming any time soon.
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- Nintendo is having a bad year, which means it’s doing better than most companies that sell unnecessary luxuries like food. (Yahoo!)
- Also, a successor to the Wii is coming. Anything else beyond that information is likely BS. (CNET)
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- Meanwhile, if you haven’t already secured your router with a complex password, you might want to consider go doing that right now. Like, immediately. Why? Because of pedophiles.No, we’re not going all Chris Hansen on you: apparently, pedos have been finding unsecured Internet connections and using them to download kiddie porn, and the FBI is apparently too stupid to realize how wireless routers work. This means a lot of people are getting dragged in front of the courts before the feds look at their computer and realize that they got the wrong people. Strong passwords, kids. (Associated Press)
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- So far, Nintendo has sold 86 million Wiis. That’s almost half of the freaking home console market. Not bad for a system fanboys wouldn’t stop whining about four years ago. Of course, the DS has sold nearly twice that…(VGChartz)
- Also, Nintendo is the third biggest company in the third biggest economy in the world. On the back of an annoying yellow rodent and a fat Italian stereotype. There’s a lesson there but we’re not sure what it is. (Business Insider)
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