Nintendo: Japan's Second Most Profitable Company. Period.

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»Nintendo: Japan\'s Second Most Profitable Company. Period.

Quote

Nintendo Co Ltd roared past Canon Inc to become Japan's second most valuable company behind Toyota Motor Corp, driven by its hot-selling Wii game console and DS handheld player.

Nintendo's Wii has so far outsold Sony's PlayStation 3 by a large margin since their launches late last year as Nintendo's strategy to expand the gaming population by offering easy-to-play but innovative games has proved a big success. Shares in Nintendo were up 2.6 percent at 58,900 yen in afternoon trade on Tuesday, bringing its market value to 8.34 trillion yen ($72.6 billion), surpassing Canon's market capitalization of 8.20 trillion yen.

Linky

All because of two hardware products. I'm sure everyone knew that Nintendo was now rolling in cash. But come on! For an industry where everyone else loses money on hardware sales, this is ridiculous, even if Nintendo has always sold hardware for profit.

Please add your comments below.

I didn't know Canon was a Japanese company...

I thought it was American. Damn.

I'll never understand all this love for the Wii since 95% of it's games are awful and the motion controls sure don't work as well as I hoped...

DS is nice though...

Because it costs less than the 360 yet doesn't have a 33% chance of exploding.

So, since it costs less people are willing to settle for all of the crap games?

It's true that the XBOX360 isn't very reliable, but Microsoft does have a 3 year warranty on them now.

Also, what's the reason Nintendo didn't bother to show up at the Tokyo Game Show?

Metroid Prime 3 is a great game. There are good games for the Wii.

Said By RudeMoody

So, since it costs less people are willing to settle for all of the crap games?

Yes. Very much so. Keep in mind that the games cost less to, and people are cheap by nature.

Said By RudeMoody

It's true that the XBOX360 isn't very reliable, but Microsoft does have a 3 year warranty on them now.

I know that, which is why it doesn't bother me. But I know many people who would look at the failure rate of the 360 and just walk away from it based on that alone, regardless of whether it is free to fix.

Said By RudeMoody

Also, what's the reason Nintendo didn't bother to show up at the Tokyo Game Show?

That is hardly a new occurrence. They usually don't show up to it.

Don't ignore the fact that 360 owners buy many more games than Wii owners, which is more important to developers than just system sales numbers...which is why many games that were previously PS3 only are being made for the 360 as well. Anyone who works at a video game store can vouche for that.

This guy put it pretty well:

"...we argue about who is going to "win" the console war. Traditionally, the end number to declare victory is the amount of console hardware is sold.

But look, consoles aren't developed to make a profit off of. Their developed to make a profit off of software - that is why Sony, MS and Nintendo are in the business to begin with. And of course, it's why the 3rd Party Dev are here.

So, what is more important to those that sell the software? The number of consoles out there or the number of "real consumers" - that is the number of people who own the console and are participating in purchasing software for it.

Take the 360 vs. Wii. For argument's sake, let's say they the 360 has 10 million consoles sold, and the Wii has 10.1 million consoles sold. Who is winning? Obviously, from Nintendo's position they are.

But are they really?

Add this to the equation: The 360 has an attachment rate of 6:1, and the Wii has an attachment rate of 2:1, that is, number of games and accessories sold to every console sold. Now who's winning? From a game developer's perspective the 360 looks like a better console to develope for. The Wii would need nearly 30 million consoles sold for a developer to put them on an equal profit opportunity as the 360.

So at the end of this, if we only calculate the number of hardware sales, can we truly say who the winner of this generation is?"

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