Nintendo Profits Fall for the First Time in Six Years

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It's pretty bad news when you consider all the facts.

Typically, the first few years console profits are relatively poor, as companies underprice their consoles and try to make money on the games, while waiting for components costs to go down.

Next, you have total until sales down pretty dramatically, and this with a price cut of 20%. That's pretty bad too. Plus, as you get more consoles out there, you'd expect your game sales to go up. You have a bigger installed base. Still more bad. I guess people don't use their Wiis that much.

It's not terrible, they're still making good money, but the handwriting is on the wall. They need to come up with a new console as the Wii atrophies, and then they can position it like Sony does the PS2, right now. Since the Wii was always obsolete anyway, and it's targeting casual gamers, it could have a long and successful life in that role. Clearly, its role as the Fleet Carrier is compromised, and going to get worse, especially if Sony makes another price cut, and with motion sensing devices imminent for their competitors. They really need to get moving with their next device, before it really starts to hurt.

Nex
 
[citation][nom]coldmast[/nom]Nintendo should start figuring out how they can keep their market dominance for the next generation of consoles.[/citation]

Precisely.

I'm no fan of the machine but from commercial perspective the Wii was a stroke of pure genius on Nintendo's part. They pulled this really innovative idea of out the hat and stole the show from the big boys because of it...

The big question is, what will they pull out of the hat next time?

The Wii's software back catalogue isn't exactly awe inspiring and much of that 'casual gaming' goodness can already be got very cheaply on the PC. I think they'll need something more to compete in the next-gen: specially a very good line-up of software. I think the next gen will be less about hardware & gimmicks and more about actual software itself; I could be wrong but that's where I'd say that's it's going...
 
A bit of theory on the stock price drop....A lower profit usually means a smaller dividend paid out, which then means the Required Return on Investment may not be met, which is a comparison of the Dividend to the current stock price (for instance, if the Required ROI is 15 percent, the Stock is valued at $50 then the expected dividend will be $7.50 per share), if profits for that year won't allow for that amount of dividend to be paid or cause the company to go into debt to cover the dividend, then either the Share price will adjust to account for the required return on investment (Dividend might be paid at $6 and therefor the share price will adjust to $40 for %15 ROI)or risk will increase due to added liabilities with an adjustment to the share price depending on the assessment of that risk.
 
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