Nintendo cuts profit forecast by 82%

@Punkrawk Bbob That'll get them out of their funk....Animal Crossing.

@Punkrawk Bbob Mario isn't soon its later this year like close to December and its only July and so is Mario Kart and Icarus is this holiday as well but the other ones are/were soon like you said for Star Fox and Zelda

@StormChaser91 i think when he said soon, he meant soon as in within the first year of the console's lifecycle.

@Punkrawk Bbob

Nintendo isn't losing its stride, it's taking steps to ensure that it doesn't. They will absolutely massacre the Vita this holiday because of the price drop. On top of that, Wii will kill at Christmas. Again. Just like it does every single year since it's been released. The software for 3DS is on the way and the goodwill toward early adopters with the VC games is pretty unheard of. I mean, morons are still gonna bitch about getting free games for some reason, but a Nintendo looking out for fans and trying to rectify pricing mistakes is a Nintendo that I can get behind.

@fasterthantheworld ah, yea sounds better lol mis understood ha

@Punkrawk Bbob

Don't feel too bad. Nintendo is still ahead by a huge margin. They absolutely dominated the video game market for 5+ years. The DS and Wii were both a monstrous success.

@A Sandwich
even with the price drop, the PSV still looks very strong. It's got killer hardware, matches or exceeds most of the features of the 3DS, and has a solid looking lineup.

Heck, after hearing about the 3DS pricedrop, most of my friends are still 'meh' about it, and some of them are some die hard Ds fans.

A lot of us think this is a clear sign that Nintendo is running scared. The WiiU wasn't that well received, and 3DS sales were flat, and game after game was delayed or canceled.

Honestly, it will come down to games, and TGS should be very telling. Is the PSV gets developers behind it, then no amount of price drops will matter, as people go where the games are.

@A Sandwich Nintendo has never listened to fans. Bringing games over from Japan has always been a hassle, majority of the time we never get. 2 years to get the Professor Layton series? Come on! That Xenoblade incident was hilarious. They are great game company on their own right. They are also their own worse enemy. Doe anybody remember that finger pulse accessory they were adverstising last year? What happened to that?

@A Sandwich

Does it get lonely in Bizzaro World where you obviously currently reside?

@mrantimatter

The PSV actually doesn't look strong because we still don't know a lot of the details. How much will games cost? What is the actual launch lineup? What hardware issues will we discover 3-9 months after launch? The problem with hardcore gamers predicting sales figures is that they're almost always wrong because their arguments consist exclusively of "Well, my friends and I (insert irrelevant example here)."
A new 3DS Mariokart bundle at Christmas is going to slaughter PSV, even if it actually does launch with Uncharted. Why? Because parents don't care that the PSV has improved graphics. The 3DS has Mario and will have Pokemon and other kid-friendly games and (once you factor in the price of a game for a PSV) it's $100 cheaper? Sold!
That being said, the Vita looks really cool. I will probably buy one. But I'm not fooling myself into thinking that I represent the majority opinion. This is going to play out exactly like last time.

@Shockwave

Would you kindly point out exactly which part of my post you're having trouble with? For example, can you point to one holiday season in the past 5 years that the Wii didn't dominate? Nintendo made no secret of the fact that the price of the 3DS was inflated, did they not just announce a price drop to rectify that mistake? I mean, I guess I could be wrong about the 3DS killing the Vita at Christmas, but I doubt it. If the 3DS looks just like a DS, the Vita looks just like a bigger PSP. And one model with 3G and one without? Forget it. Most parents are going to be confused right there.

@A Sandwich

"The PSV actually doesn't look strong because we still don't know a lot of the details. How much will games cost? What is the actual launch lineup? What hardware issues will we discover 3-9 months after launch?"

Yea, because you knew all that when your 3DS and Wii were announced a year before release? I seem to remember you writing glowing, happy previews of those systems before their debut.. and before you knew any of that.

"The problem with hardcore gamers predicting sales figures is that they're almost always wrong because their arguments consist exclusively of "Well, my friends and I (insert irrelevant example here).""

Um... no. That's not how we predict sales of games...

"A new 3DS Mariokart bundle at Christmas is going to slaughter PSV, even if it actually does launch with Uncharted. Why? Because parents don't care that the PSV has improved graphics. "

No, but kids care...kids who ASK for the system. PS: Uncharted sells pretty damned well. So far, Nintendo's star franchises haven't saved the 3DS, so I wouldn't expect Mario Kart to single handedly lift it from it's rut.

"The 3DS has Mario and will have Pokemon and other kid-friendly games and (once you factor in the price of a game for a PSV) it's $100 cheaper? Sold!"

And the PSV doesn't have those type of games? Have you done ZERO research on this handheld? And it's 100 bucks cheaper because the hardware is 100 dollars less impressive. Which has obviously effected their sales.

"That being said, the Vita looks really cool. I will probably buy one. But I'm not fooling myself into thinking that I represent the majority opinion. This is going to play out exactly like last time."

I severely doubt this, considering how blatantly anti-anything-but-Nintendo you are, and judging by your rather slanted view of the gaming world through your last comment. If you're telling the truth, good for you. Personally, I think once affordable, all systems (despite stinkers like the Virtual Boy and the Jaguar) are worth owning, but I just don't picture your console collection to be that diverse...

@A Sandwich

I have to at least partially agree. Vita looks really impressive, but when talking about games and lineups and such... it's not out yet. Five months or so ago joystiq was abuzz with how 3DS had the best launch lineup ever. How'd that work out? And the theoretical thing you haven't touched is always going to look better than the thing in your hands, warts and all.

@Shockwave

"Yea, because you knew all that when your 3DS and Wii were announced a year before release? I seem to remember you writing glowing, happy previews of those systems before their debut.. and before you knew any of that."

Wrong. I wasn't around before the Wii came out.

"No, but kids care...kids who ASK for the system. PS: Uncharted sells pretty damned well. So far, Nintendo's star franchises haven't saved the 3DS, so I wouldn't expect Mario Kart to single handedly lift it from it's rut."

Uncharted doesn't sell to seven year olds, genius. And the only star Nintendo franchise on the 3DS so far is a 15 year old remake that's still managed to spur sales and sell to almost 25% of the 3DS's install base.

"And the PSV doesn't have those type of games? Have you done ZERO research on this handheld? And it's 100 bucks cheaper because the hardware is 100 dollars less impressive. Which has obviously effected their sales."

I'd say poor initial software and an inflated price point affected the sales of the 3DS. And sure, the Vita has kid games, they're just not franchises that any actual kids give a shit about. Better?

And for the record, my console collection has at one point or another included every system made by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. So you'd be wrong there.

@Shockwave "So far, Nintendo's star franchises haven't saved the 3DS..."

You mean that one Zelda game?

@Theneverendingsoda

"Nintendo, for whatever reason, decided it was wise to divorce their long time core fanbase for a "casual fling". Now they're paying the price for it because this new "fling" was just in it for a cheap thrill and has sense left them for dead.

They divorced their long time core fanbase by putting out more games in their core franchise then they ever have in the past plus digitally distributing their classics libraries from all their past consoles.

@A Sandwich

I think Wii sales will be pretty dormant from here on out because of the WiiU announcement. As far as 3DS destroying Vita ... we'll have to wait and see. At this point the 3 DS has been a miserable flop. Past performance isn't indicative of future returns. The 3DS price drop just reiterates how overpriced it was from the start.

You probably won't be a happy camper come this holiday because vita is going to kill and PS3 & 360 will be due for another price drop.

@A Sandwich

No, Nintendo's problem is that they keep trying to set the curve. While being innovative is not a problem, they are taking themselves out of the 3rd party market. They have the top 1st party down, if they just focused on supporting the developers more, they would still be on top.

The problem was predicting the 3DS to take off like the DS right away (even the DS started out slow like this, but its easy to forget how things work), when it obviously needs some time for the DS to die down and game library to increase before everyone starts buying 3DS. This price drop should greatly help, but it still just needs time like any new system.

@mrantimatter : Nintendo is gonna have to pull their head out of their rear-ends and come with it at TGS. They are gonna have to show us some really awesome Wii U stuff at TGS. No more of this secretive garbage. They do that, they'll be okay.

@A Sandwich PSV games are priced at $40 on Amazon. Just like 3DS games.

@Theneverendingsoda
Exactly. The new gamer isn't going to buy the Wii U in droves just like they did with the Wii. In fact, the whole Wii thing is falling apart at the seams. Why else would Nintendo devote this year's E3 at trying to convince gamers that they're paying attention to them now? Because they know for a fact that the "new" gamers they attracted with the Wii were never going to stick around for long. If they honest to goodness thought that their strategy with the Wii was going to work a second time, why even go back and try to entice the core gamer like they did this last E3? Precisely because they know the core gamer is the only kind of consumer in the industry that consistently buys consoles.

@Theneverendingsoda

"They divorced their core fanbase by releasing a system that was technologically challenged and pairing it with crappy motion controls that hardcore gamers laughed at....and still laugh at."

No they alienated technophiles by releasing a system that was "technologically challenged" as you put. It wasnt the first time they've alienated them. Just like they did with the NES and SNES.

Core Nintendo fans were too busy playing a new Punchout, donkey kong country or 2d Mario to be mad.

And you should know that a lot of wiis were sold to lapsed gamers, people who were alienated by the so called "hardcore" games that flooded every system for the last decade or so.

@TwEE
You do know the NES and SNES had competitively powerful hardware when they were released, don't you?

@PointlessPuppies

TwEE never lets facts get in the way of his favorite past time ... bloviating.

@PointlessPuppies

Off the top of my head..

The NeoGeo and the Atari jaguar killed the SNES as far as power goes.

As for the Nes I know it was competing against the Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx-16 for a few years before Nintendo released the SNES.

I know there are more too, but Id have to dig around in google.

@BrandonJD

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2011/01/wii-edges-xbox-in-console-sales-for-2010-sony-mum-on-ps3-figures/1

Sales crash and still #1? Weird. Also, the profits on a Wii must be insane by now.

@A Sandwich

It is 2011.

We are 2 quarters into 2011. Yeah, they were doing great, much better last year. But all of the above was doing better last year.

From last year to this year the Wii is selling half of what it did, with the other console makers not taking nearly that big of a hit. Its hard to ignore that not nearly as many people are buying as they once were, while the other companies are reporting lesser, but much more stable numbers.

One cant even blame news of the WiiU on this, since we didn't get news of it until E3, which is way too late to have had an effect on sales.

@A Sandwich

You need to stop looking at unit sales numbers and start looking at the bottom line. Fact is, Nintendo posted a loss - despite selling more consoles.

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2011/110728e.pdf

If I recall - only Microsoft posted a net profit this time around. Both Nintendo and Sony posted hard losses. Goes to show that console sales mean squat when it comes to a company's overall financial success.

@A Sandwich
They won't be "#1" in the long run, you know. Look at how many worldwide sales the Wii has had (about 100 million). The PS2 has had 130 million and it's still selling, whereas the Wii WILL be killed completely the minute the Wii U is released.

The Wii, despite the short-lived success of 2006-2010, will NOT have been the highest-selling console OR the longest-lasting console at the end of the day.

Just think about that for a bit. The Wii didn't have the sales-wise impact you think it did.

@baby sea tuna You didn't even read their financial statements did you?

@Faceless Troll

What, are you my accountant all of the sudden?

@baby sea tuna No, having a laugh at your expense. Because most people are too lazy to read financial statements first.

@Faceless Troll

Well, at least someone thinks it's funny.

@baby sea tuna

Can you trade used stocks to Gamestop?

@(Unverified) ZING!

People joked about it being the Virtual Boy 2.0, but who would've guessed it might come true?

@D3m0sthenes I think the price cut will help a lot. But it surely wouldn't hurt them to make it known to the Average Joe that the 3ds is not just a 3d DS.

@D3m0sthenes

I love 3D, but I am not into paying double the manufacturing costs for the privilege of having it. A 3D TV adds a 10% penalty over an equivalent TV, and I can live with that. I know that the 3DS adds more than just 3D, but where are all the slick games showcasing the power? Pilotwings and Nintendogs+Cats are not it. If they had made the Zelda OOT remake have Twilight Princess level graphics, then we got a case.

@D3m0sthenes

I personally don't care for 3D and doubt that I ever will. Having HD is more than good enough for me. Glasses or not, I think 3D is a fad that's just hanging around long enough for the "next big thing"...

@D3m0sthenes

It's not the 3D feature that is detracting....it is the lack of games. This same thing happened when the DS was first released. The system will become more attractive once more games are released. I think Nintendo anticipated that more games would have been available by the release date but they probably slipped. Kid Icarus slipping was a huge blow. All this snowballed into the situation we have now.

@D3m0sthenes

It doesn't look like it's the 3D that's killing the 3DS, it looks like it's the cost/no games/upcoming competition.

@D3m0sthenes

I agree with what you guys say, there are many reasons I don't own one and you all know what they are.

At least when the DS came out the only problem it had was no games. The price was fair, the battery was good.

I guess it was kinda ugly though, haha.