Nintendo To Release New Console

Nubclear · January 24, 2003, 00:44

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/fun.gam...eut/index.html

Quote:

KYOTO, Japan (Reuters) -- Nintendo, creator of "Pokemon" video games, said on Thursday it planned to launch a next-generation home game console in 2005 or 2006 in a move to restore its clout in the lucrative home video game market.

"We are developing a new home video game console with a plan to release the new system around the same time as rival makers do," President Satoru Iwata said.

Industry veteran Nintendo, which has fallen well behind leader Sony Corp and vies with newcomer Microsoft Corp for the number two spot in the console market, suffered poor sales of its flagship GameCube console during the crucial holiday shopping season.

In contrast, Sony said this month it had sold 8.5 million PlayStation 2s during the shopping season, up 24 percent from a year earlier, and that accumulated shipments topped 50 million units worldwide.

Falling behind
Iwata, who took over in May from the charismatic Hiroshi Yamauchi, said the GameCube console would miss its sales target of 10 million units by over 10 percent this business year and GameCube software sales would fall short of a 55-million-unit goal.

"The PlayStation 2 debuted one-and-a-half years ahead of the GameCube. If we had launched the GameCube at the same time as PlayStation 2, the result would have been different," he said.

"We will get ready for a (new) battle in 2005 although foreign game developers are now saying that rival next-generation systems won't come until 2006."

Revamping console business
As a part of its effort to revamp its home console business, Nintendo plans to release new Pokemon games for GameCube which will enable users to play the game on the Game Boy Advance, too, by transferring the data back and forth between the two consoles.

"Our focus for 2003 is to offer new types of games which allow consumers to play both on the GameCube and Game Boy Advance," Iwata said.

Iwata did not rule out the possibility of slashing the price of the GameCube console, which he said ranked number two in the global home console market, but he said action was not imminent.

Missing profit targets?
Analysts said the poor performance of its GameCube operations, especially in high-margin software sales, and the yen's rise against the dollar were expected to weigh on the game exporter's profit for this business year.

Hit by the strong yen and slack demand for its game systems, Nintendo in October slashed its net profit forecast for 2002/03 by 11 percent to 80 billion yen ($676.2 million), based on an exchange rate of 123 yen per dollar versus the current 118 yen.

For Nintendo, which holds hefty foreign-currency-based assets, each one-yen drop in the dollar trims 3.5 billion yen from non-operating profit, in addition to the negative impact on operating profits in yen terms, analysts said.

Iwata agreed that the yen's current level was a negative factor but said it was too early to revise profit forecasts as the Game Boy Advance's performance was solid and new Pokemon games due in North America in March should give it a boost.

Not satisfied
Iwata said that he was not satisfied with the stock price.

"Given the slumping Tokyo stock market as a whole, it's not only Nintendo's problem. But it's my duty to bring good results to investors," Iwata said.

Nintendo, which bought back 4.65 million of its own stock during the October-December period, would buy back shares when the stock fell excessively, but it needed to raise profits in its core business to shore up the price over the long term, he said.

New ideas loom
Investors want to see new ideas before pushing the stock up.

"Nintendo's GameCube is way behind Sony's PlayStation and looks to lose out to the (Microsoft) Xbox as well, and with no new products in the pipeline, it's hard to see where the growth will come from," said Takehiko Takachio, senior portfolio manager at Kokusai Asset Management.

"But Nintendo is still a company with great development capabilities, and I don't think the GameCube is going so bad that they will have to follow the road that Sega took in withdrawing from hardware," he said.

Iwata dismissed speculation that the company would eventually abandon home console production.

"When we withdraw from the home game console, that's when we withdraw from the video game business," he said.

I dont think Nintendo quite understands its problem....

monkspider · January 24, 2003, 00:45

Sounds good, I have never confessed this to anyone here, but I always kind of liked Pokemon.

DinoDoc · January 24, 2003, 00:46

ixnay · January 24, 2003, 00:50

Good. They have a chance to seriously compete if they get a console out at the same time/before the other next-gen consoles.

Nubclear · January 24, 2003, 00:51

Quote:

Originally posted by ixnay
Good. They have a chance to seriously compete if they get a console out at the same time/before the other next-gen consoles.

Not unless they can get rid of the kiddie image. Unforutnately, I predict more games like Mario and Celda are to come.....

Drake Tungsten · January 24, 2003, 00:52

Quote:

I dont think Nintendo quite understands its problem....

You overlooked the main point of the article. The main point was that Nintendo would be launching its next console at the same time as the PS3 and Xbox 2, so they won't be at a disadvantage due to launch date. The Pokemon stuff was already known and pretty irrelevant to the story.

Nubclear · January 24, 2003, 00:54

Quote:

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
You overlooked the main point of the article.

So? Makes my arguement no less true...

monkspider · January 24, 2003, 00:55

The kiddie image thing is silly. To a certain extent, the Gamecube is actually more of an "adult" system than the other two. Since 13-16 year olds are probably too "cool" to play something like Mario, we older, more laid back folks have no such "cool" reputation to protect, and therefore we have lots of great fun with Mario or Kirby or what have you.

Not to mention 2003 looks like the best year yet for the cube, Zelda, Mario Kart, Tennis and Golf, Resident Evil 4, a bunch of other good Capcom exclusives, Star Fox Armada, plus a bunch of others I forget. Basically I can assure you that 2003 will be Gamecube's best year yet.

DinoDoc · January 24, 2003, 00:56

Quote:

Originally posted by Tassadar5000
Unforutnately, I predict more games like Mario and Celda are to come.....

Oh heaven forbid they publish games that sell well.

Drake Tungsten · January 24, 2003, 00:57

Well, if people won't buy Nintendo consoles because they think Mario and Zelda are "kid" games, then Nintendo is ****ed no matter what they do. If your best franchises won't sell because of some stupid public image, what are you supposed to do?

Asher · January 24, 2003, 00:57

Quote:

Originally posted by monkspider
The kiddie image thing is silly.

Quote:

To a certain extent, the Gamecube is actually more of an "adult" system than the other two.

Fighting fire with fire!

monkspider · January 24, 2003, 00:57

Besides, I'm tired of everyone always hating on Pokemon.

Henceforth, I will stand as Apolyton's official Pokemon apologist.

monkspider · January 24, 2003, 00:59

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher

Fighting fire with fire!

Are you being nice Ashie? If so I will try not to pick on you in the XBOX threads anymore.

Asher · January 24, 2003, 01:03

Quote:

Originally posted by monkspider
Are you being nice Ashie? If so I will try not to pick on you in the XBOX threads anymore.

I was just being silly, I wouldn't call it being nice but not being mean either.

Nintendo's under new management now, let's hope they have somewhat of an idea how to run a business.

It always frustrates me to see so many very talented game developers under one roof, then have their management drive the company into the ground.

Drake Tungsten · January 24, 2003, 01:05

Quote:

It always frustrates me to see so many very talented game developers under one roof, then have their management drive the company into the ground.

Why? Bad management allowed MS to get its claws into Sega...

faded glory · January 24, 2003, 01:08

hah! Nintendo is trash. I hope they go down. I see them filing that frivilous lawsuit against microsoft for being a "Monopoly". How soon do we all forget the 80's when nintendo had 98% control of the console market. And they charged 150$ for games like ms.Pac Man and Ninja turtles.

Ya screw microsoft too. Not that I like either of them. Consoles are for moron who cant trouble-shoot on a PC

Nubclear · January 24, 2003, 01:08

Quote:

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Well, if people won't buy Nintendo consoles because they think Mario and Zelda are "kid" games, then Nintendo is ****ed no matter what they do. If your best franchises won't sell because of some stupid public image, what are you supposed to do?

Eliminate that image.

What else?

Asher · January 24, 2003, 01:09

The only Sega games I own right now are SegaGT, NHL2K3 (published only), and ToeJam and Earl.

I really don't think they're anything special.

DinoDoc · January 24, 2003, 01:09

I won't have to buy an XBox2 now. I can already tell that the PS3 is going to suck, so they were out of the running fairly quickly.

Asher · January 24, 2003, 01:10

Quote:

Originally posted by faded glory
Consoles are for moron who cant trouble-shoot on a PC

This would definitely include me, right.

DinoDoc · January 24, 2003, 01:11

Quote:

Originally posted by faded glory
Consoles are for moron who cant trouble-shoot on a PC

I take it Asher wasn't able to help you get back on XBox Live again.

Drake Tungsten · January 24, 2003, 01:12

Quote:

Eliminate that image.

How? Are you going to make the next Mario-game a first-person shooter? Is Peach going to take her top off? How exactly do you make a Mario game that can't be construed as "kiddie" by dumbass teens?

Besides, Nintendo's been trying to eliminate the image. Nothing has worked. Games like Eternal Darkness and Metroid Prime are not kid-friendly, but they are always ignored by people who want to pigeon hole Nintendo...

faded glory · January 24, 2003, 01:14

The majority of consoles arent aimed towards the Ashers and glonks out there . There aimed towards 13 year olds

But if you enjoy it. Thats cool.

Hey I got my X-box to work right dino.

Asher · January 24, 2003, 01:15

Quote:

Originally posted by DinoDoc
I won't have to buy an XBox2 now. I can already tell that the PS3 is going to suck, so they were out of the running fairly quickly.

I agree with the PS3 going to suck, Sony's being incredibly stupid with the design.

According to the patent they filed it's going to be a very, very parallel system, much more than the PS2. And that's what developers HATED about it.

It's using high-bandwidth, high-latency RDRAM as main RAM which is a pain in the ass to develop with.

It's using "cells" of smaller processors, so they can achieve huge theoretical numbers (marketing tool), and much smaller real-world numbers in addition to making debugging and developing code MUCH harder.

They're taking what developers hated about the PS2 and cranking it up to the extreme.

Because it's so hard to program, they're encouraging middleware. They're going to develop their own 3D engines and license it out to companies, so they don't need to spend millions of dollars optimizing the code like they already have to do with PS2.

All signs point to MS using similar designs as before, which worked VERY well. Xbox2 will most likely be a modified NV50/R500, Pentium 5 processor, ~512MB DDR-II RAM on a 256-bit bus.

Nintendo's more of a mystery. ATI is rumoured to be competing with Nvidia quite strongly for Xbox2, so who knows who's making their GPU...and IBM (who made the Gamecube's CPU) is doing the PS3.

Drake Tungsten · January 24, 2003, 01:16

Quote:

I really don't think they're anything special.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=74414

Drake Tungsten · January 24, 2003, 01:17

I think Hitachi is involved with the next Nintendo console, IIRC.

Asher · January 24, 2003, 01:18

Quote:

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=74414

Yes, I know they get good reviews most of the time, but I don't think they're anything special.

Smilebit has some AWESOME graphics programmers though.

Asher · January 24, 2003, 01:19

Quote:

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I think Hitachi is involved with the next Nintendo console, IIRC.

Hmm...

So it's probably going to be an SH processor.

They seem to work well with games.

Nubclear · January 24, 2003, 01:19

Quote:

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Quote:

Eliminate that image.

How? Are you going to make the next Mario-game a first-person shooter? Is Peach going to take her top off? How exactly do you make a Mario game that can't be construed as "kiddie" by dumbass teens?

How about actually TRYING to eliminate it. Dont use stupid names (Mario "Sunshine"), dont use cartoony graphics (Celda), and dont release anything of that sort.

It only takes one to ruin the entire batch.

faded glory · January 24, 2003, 01:19

ahh Pentium 5. Im building my AMD 2ghz system at home. Freakin nForce2 and Ti4200. Screamin gfx

oh dont forget dual channel 2 x 512 PC3200

oiii...now if I could only get it to work