When Nintendo’s top brass gathered in Tokyo to speak to analysts Friday, they admitted they had been caught off-guard by the slowdown in Wii demand.
To the dismay of analysts and fans, they did not announce a new Wii console, as some had hoped, or a revolutionary new game.
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick the London-based Times that the video game company might stop making games for the Sony Playstation.
U.S. sales of video game hardware, software and accessories were down 23 percent in May to $863.3 million, according to market research firm NPD. It was the first month with sales under $1 billion since August 2007.
Let’s just admit it: the Nintendo people are total geniuses.
Netbooks are hot. Intel estimates that the laptops–which can cost less than $300–sold faster in their first 12 months on the market than Apple’s iPhone or Nintendo’s Wii game console did. Could a similar low-end niche emerge in server systems?
It’s too early to tell, but there are some tantalizing signs–and some big ramifications if the trend takes hold.
Here’s a puzzle: Why does Nintendo expect dramatically fewer software titles to sell for its Wii and DS game machines this year?
This morning, Tokyo time, the company announced results for its fiscal year ended in March that were a little bit better than expected thanks to the strength of the Japanese Yen.
While much of the tech sector has fallen on hard times during the recession, the videogame industry has thrived, as penny-pinching consumers look for lower-cost entertainment. Why go out when a family of four can buy a videogame and get 50 hours of entertainment out of it?
Has Nintendo run out of new levels to play?
Deutsche Bank analyst Satoru Kikuchi this morning launched coverage of the videogame company with a Sell rating, asserting that profits are likely to “peak and decline after growing on the success of the Wii and the DS.” He asserts that earnings could “return to past levels if the company fails to come up with new blockbuster platforms.”
Last week, when the hardcore gamers of the world were supposed to be firing up The Lost and Damned, a new, downloadable episode of Grand Theft Auto IV, I instead decided to spend more than $400 for the privilege of playing a $10 game.
The National Bureau of Economic Research hardly stunned the nation this month when it announced that the United States had been in recession since December 2007. And, as it turns out, the buyers of consumer electronics could very well have been a leading economic indicator. Over the last year, they chose to buy two inexpensive and simple products, the Wii and the Flip, over competing gadgets bristling with more features.
Nintendo seems to have bucked the recession. The Japanese videogame manufacturer has doubled November sales of the Wii in the U.S. from a year ago, according to NPD’s latest release on gaming sales.
Guitar Hero World Tour couldn’t boost Activision Blizzard’s share price despite a decent debut this weekend. Decent, but not stellar. Wii and Xbox 360 versions of the game were near-sellouts, the PS3 version less so. Good news, then, that UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter thinks the videogame industry could be recession-resistant.
With the influx of fresh new gamers, thanks in large part to the popularity of mass-market game machines, the DS and the Wii, more game companies than ever are jumping on the girl gamer bandwagon. Practically every booth at this year’s E3 Media and Business Summit this year had something to offer for female gamers of various demographics.
We’ve come a long way since Pong and Space Invaders. But video and computer games are still striving to be both interactive and realistic. Have you seen the “Saturday Night Live” skit of the interview with Grand Theft Auto IV’s main characters, Niko and Vlad?
The latest data on video game software sales from market research firm NPD shows continued robust demand.
In May, video game software sales rose 41% on a year-over-year basis. Pacific Crest’s Evan Wilson, in his review of the data, noted that console hardware sales saw little benefit from the launch of Take-Two’s (TTWO) Grand Theft Auto IV.
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