wiiwaa- nintendo hates me personally.

[RadarScope1]

If we want to see sales genius , lets look:
Sony 's first console in a high competitive market : PSX Sales 102m+28m ps one= 130m
Second console to market: ps2 = 138m
ps3=
Total: 268m!

Nintendo: Wii 56m+GC 21.74+N64 33m+SNES 50m+NES 61m
Total: 222m!

Hmmmm...

Let's say I buy widgets for $3.00 and sell them for $2.00. I sell 1000 widgets.
You buy widgets for $2.50 and sell them for $3.00. You sell only 200.

At the end of the day, I've lost $1,000 and you've made $100.

Am I the sales genius?

Exactly. Kingmohd - I'm not comparing them to Sony or anyone else. You're making a sports-like analogy where one team wins and another loses. I'm not doing that. You're also talking units sold and I'm talking cold hard cash. I'm also just looking at fairly recent history. Yeah, N64 and GameCube didn't do all that hot in the overall marketplace. No big revelation there. Hasn't seemed to hurt them in the long run.

I'm simply pointing out that your poo-poo-ing of Nintendo's market muscle and ability to sell over-priced, under-powered products to millions of (frankly, IMO) dummies, seems a little off. With your extreme dislike of Nintendo I would think you would agree on that point, at least.

[SplashChick]

Metroid Prime Trilogy showed me they still care.

Also, the current argument shows why I completely ignore game reviews.

[RCBH928]

psOne is a psx in a different packaging,
Its a console that plays pSX games only with different look, its a psx.
Thats like a Slim is a PS3.

You guys are telling me that Sony lost money on every ps2/psx console?!
You must be kidding me
I get the widgets example, but its impossible that they lost money on those consoles. I know about the current ps3 situation.
But if they lost just $10 on each console, that means they lost a total of $2 billion!
That means Sony had to sell 33+ Million games at full price of $60 just to break even!
We still didn't talk game development costs yet!

I agree that Nintendo sells under-powered products at high prices and people buy, I think this is basically because of the nostalgia factor. They keep selling Mario and Zelda games, games there were there since the 80's. I really would like to see Nintendo releasing a new IP. Sony and Microsoft got enough balls with God of War, Gears of War, and more. What was Nintendo's last original IP?

I am not sure why every one now is calling Nintendo money making machines. I do not hear any one talking about their money making genius with the 64 and the Gamecube.

I didn't compare them to Sony because I am on Sony's side, I did because most of you are saying Nintendo is a money making genius because of the sales. Last time they won it was the SNES days, even that was close enough to the Genesis.

I find it hard to believe Sony lost money on ps2/psx . Maybe at first but they must have at least made money on half the sales, 5 years into the console's life time.

I have to say that Nintendo is smart to stay in the business. If we look at potential console earlier on and how they died its sad, where is Atari, Commodore , Sega, Neo-Geo? They all died due to bad management, while Nintendo is still here even though they made catastrophic descisions like staying with the cartridge, and going with the extremely underpowered console this generation.
No body tells me it was the right decision, It was pure luck. If it failed, everyone would have said because it had no storage, no HD, no CPU power. But now that it is successful every one is saying thats exactly what the market needed. Hell, people are blaming lack of DVD player for the death of the Dreamcast.

[pepharytheworm]

Why don't we move all this non wiiwaa related arguements to the wii-failure thread.

[Dylan]

You guys are telling me that Sony lost money on every ps2/psx console?!
You must be kidding me
I get the widgets example, but its impossible that they lost money on those consoles. I know about the current ps3 situation.
But if they lost just $10 on each console, that means they lost a total of $2 billion!
That means Sony had to sell 33+ Million games at full price of $60 just to break even!
We still didn't talk game development costs yet!

Oh? Find some sales figures and we'll see.

I agree that Nintendo sells under-powered products at high prices and people buy, I think this is basically because of the nostalgia factor. They keep selling Mario and Zelda games, games there were there since the 80's. I really would like to see Nintendo releasing a new IP. Sony and Microsoft got enough balls with God of War, Gears of War, and more. What was Nintendo's last original IP?

Nostalgia for what? The last couple generations you keep bashing? This is clearly incorrect based on the knowledge that Nintendo has expanded the market to more casual gamers. In addition, this is an irrelevant point because the units were sold regardless.

I am not sure why every one now is calling Nintendo money making machines. I do not hear any one talking about their money making genius with the 64 and the Gamecube.

Stop bringing that up. Once again, this is not a relevant point when considered in the grand scheme of things. For reference as to why this reasoning is illogical, refer to my last post.

I didn't compare them to Sony because I am on Sony's side, I did because most of you are saying Nintendo is a money making genius because of the sales. Last time they won it was the SNES days, even that was close enough to the Genesis.

Incorrect. If you review this thread, you'll see that you're the one who's basing success and profits entirely off of console sales, without regards to any other factors.

I have to say that Nintendo is smart to stay in the business. If we look at potential console earlier on and how they died its sad, where is Atari, Commodore , Sega, Neo-Geo? They all died due to bad management, while Nintendo is still here even though they made catastrophic descisions like staying with the cartridge, and going with the extremely underpowered console this generation.

I don't consider going with the underpowered console this generation a catastrophic decision based on the fact that it has launched them ahead of the market. You need to consider the actual facts of the situation.

No body tells me it was the right decision, It was pure luck. If it failed, everyone would have said because it had no storage, no HD, no CPU power. But now that it is successful every one is saying thats exactly what the market needed. Hell, people are blaming lack of DVD player for the death of the Dreamcast.

This is not a logical argument. None of these things have occurred. It'd be like if one tried to argue "what if Microsoft couldn't sell their software?", it doesn't matter because it isn't actual reality.

Your arguments are making progressively less sense.

[SplashChick]

The Wii was the first console in history to have an MSRP that was higher than the unit's production cost on launch day. Learn some history, dude, every other console went a long way into the red before production costs lowered enough to start making it up.

[SplashChick]

If you don't think Nintendo are genius at making metric butt-tons of money, I would think you might have to re-evaluate your definition of "making money."

Just think about this. They introduced the DSi this year. Rather than dropping the price of the DS Lite and introducing the DSi at the original top-end price point -- as almost ANY other hardware manufacturer on Earth would do -- Nintendo effectively RAISED THE PRICE of the DS by about $40 for very little in return for the end consumer. And it fucking WORKED. Millions bought the thing.

See also: multi-colored consoles and controllers; controllers that come in three pieces for full operation costing $80 total; re-releasing NES games on the GBA at $20 a pop; charging $5 for ROMs of some rubbish NES games on virtual console such as Urban Champion; ... the list goes on.

Nintendo prints money. Discussion of rankings, scores, core/casual audience are not valid in respect to that one point. "Genius" pretty well describes it, I would say.

[Limewater]

You guys are telling me that Sony lost money on every ps2/psx console?!
You must be kidding me
I get the widgets example, but its impossible that they lost money on those consoles. I know about the current ps3 situation.
But if they lost just $10 on each console, that means they lost a total of $2 billion!
That means Sony had to sell 33+ Million games at full price of $60 just to break even!
We still didn't talk game development costs yet!

No, I was not really saying that Sony loses money on every single console sold. I'm pretty sure they currently make a profit on every PS2 sold, but I could easily be wrong. My point was that number of consoles sold is a poor indicator of which company is doing better financially.

Anyway, I actually found a decently helpful chart. It's a little bit hard to read, but it cites sources and gives net profit for each year for Sony's games division, Nintendo, Sega, and Microsoft.

They stop tracking Sega after 2001, I guess because they exited the console market in the US.

If you look at it, you'll see that Nintendo has not had a net loss since they got into the video game business in 1981. Even during the years when the PS and PS2 were severely outselling the N64 and Gamecube, Sony's Games segment still lost money several years, and only beat Nintendo in profits once.

Here is the chart:
http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=57802

Even in the Gamecube and N64 years, Nintendo was ahead of the competition when it came to making money except in 2003

[Dylan]

If you look at it, you'll see that Nintendo has not had a net loss since they got into the video game business in 1981. Even during the years when the PS and PS2 were severely outselling the N64 and Gamecube, Sony's Games segment still lost money several years, and only beat Nintendo in profits once.

Here is the chart:
http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=57802

Even in the Gamecube and N64 years, Nintendo was ahead of the competition when it came to making money except in 2003

Wow. I knew Nintendo was good at making money, but I didn't know that they were that good at it.

[SplashChick]

5.5 BILLION dollars this year.

They really DO print money!