Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Nintendo loss

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Lucario-Master

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Nintendo has released their quarterly earnings and it has taken a sharp drop (61%) It is also forcasted that Nintendo will lose around 500 million this year....
Now I remember being told that regional prize money being dropped was partially due to the fact that Nintendo was not doing the best. Seeing this now worries me, will Nintendo cut more from pokemon? or even worse will Nintendo drop competitive play all together?
Just bringing it up to discuss
 
ShadowCard said:
Where did you hear this about the drop in earnings and the forecast?
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It's been news, here's a link from Cnet when I read about it: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-5...ue-when-will-the-bleeding-stop/?tag=mncol;txt

Granted that's mostly related to console sales and Nintendo in general (as well as a strong yen), but that could in turn affect Pokemon since Nintendo is the parent company, and what easier way to save a bit of money by dropping prize support a bit more? Personally I hope it doesn't happen, but it could...
 
The Play! Pokemon budget is exactly the same as last year, which just means that the money saved from stopping scholarships at Regionals is being spent elsewhere. I'd bet that with the extra attendances from having Championship Points, venue costs have increased plus events like the UK Nationals have been given additional prize support.

Past this year though, I'm not sure what will happen. It would be a huge waste for Nintendo to spend all these years building up Pokemon OP to lose it over stopping the budget for one year, but you can never be sure. The Wii U is being released in 2012, and the 3DS is starting to increase in sales, so I expect Nintendo to do a lot better in the next financial year.
 
From my understanding, this isn't how much money they LOST, it's how much money they DIDN'T MAKE compared to last year.

Nintendo's fine. 3DS just hit like 14 million sales. Don't worry about it.
 
[R]Visitor;2187486 said:
From my understanding, this isn't how much money they LOST, it's how much money they DIDN'T MAKE compared to last year.
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That is only partly correct.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/26/nintendo-releases-quarterly-earnings-report-61-percent-drop-in/

From a quarterly standpoint, the issue is about how much money Nintendo DIDN'T MAKE relative to last year. From an annual standpoint, Nintendo is now projecting a $580 million LOSS. The latter is much more important than the former because 1) last quarter was the holiday season and 2) losing a year has more impact than winning a quarter. This basically means that Nintendo lost enough money from the other 3 quarters to outweigh the profits from the holiday season.

In layman's terms, Nintendo is losing money and it is in trouble. Admittedly, bankruptcy is an exaggerated scenario, though; because, despite the not insignificant losses, Nintendo has in its possession a decent amount of net assets. Nintendo could probably last a couple years under the assumption that its fundamentals don't deteriorate further. It's current portfolio is not encouraging, however.
 
What happens with Nintendo has no bearing on what happens with P!P as far as prize support. They are two separate companies. When the Pokemon game left WotC, Nintendo helped get Pokemon back on it's feet card wise, but it's been a while since Nintendo has affected them based on my knowledge. P!P is a fully functional, separate entity. While Nintendo (it's not going to happen) going down would be very bad, I'm not sure if it would affect P!P.

Knowing how some of the quirks work, the reason being that there is less prize support for Regionals, is because there are more events that players can go do. It has to do with more players in more events, equals a rise in cost, which is what the scholarship money is now being used for, nothing to do with Nintendo losing money this year.

I was surprised to know that this was the first losing year Nintendo has had in 25 years, which shocked me considering how much was emphasized on how poorly Nintendo was doing during the latter part of the N64 era, and most of the Gamecube era. To learn that they actually MADE money, is something that is a not only a shock, but shows how much the media blew up the "end of the world" scenario for Nintendo back then.

Drew
 
It is also important to look at what Nintendo has been doing. The Wii came out in North America in November of 2006, and made a December 2006 release in the Japanese, Australian, and European markets. The Wii should be close to the end of, if not its overall life cycle, the "prime" of its life cycle. Even if it had been completely state of the art when released, it has had five holiday shopping seasons; it is near semi-retirement (or full fledged retirement if the market isn't favorable).

Now on top of it just being "about that time", Nintendo has had fantastic success with the Wii... and you can't resell to everyone. Coupled with the above, by now most people who want a Wii have it, and I know quite a few have even sprung for it as a gift for family or friends! That's how great the market penetration is, there are just so few people left to buy it for the first time, and while there is a newer model available, it doesn't contain all the features of the original, so it is something of a niche item.

Now we get to the actual hardware and software. The Wii was designed to be "affordable", and I'd say it worked, but it was a trade off. As someone who doesn't fixate on graphics, even I know that what was "good" for the Wii was "poor" for the X-Box 360 and the PS3. Overall the improvements the Wii offered over the GameCube basically was a half-step for the visuals. I've always worried more about the "game" half of "video games", but for those who live and breathe (and buy and play) based on "eye candy", that was a huge issue. Still in the end, the hardware was showing its age when it released, so again you'd expect the Wii unit sales to be struggling.

It is the software sales where some surprise is merited. Nintendo has released a lot of filler, but you don't have to buy it so that isn't the only problem. Gaming has made some significant changes, some for the better and some for the worse. In principle I like DLC and the Virtual Console, but some aspects of it are really annoying. Plus gamers are burning through titles like never before, so it isn't unusual for someone to burn through the big holiday releases long before summer. If a system doesn't have multiple big titles coming out each quarter, it is perceived as a "drought". @_@

Then there is the Nintendo DS and the milking of it. Nintendo chose to get their money "up front" by releasing too many Nintendo DS revisions. Looking at it, the DS Lite should have been the "original", with the "brick" version being a prototype known only to fanboys, and either the DSi or the DSi XL, or perhaps even both should have been skipped. Coupled with the high initial price tag, it is no wonder the 3DS underperformed until the free game or price drop offer.

So really, I'd say Nintendo's future is mostly in its own hands. This is still not good news for them, but its bad news most of us saw coming. The real significance is it showed how overconfident Nintendo is again becoming... which preceded their last major decline during the N64/GameCube generations.
 
Otaku said:
It is also important to look at what Nintendo has been doing. The Wii came out in North America in November of 2006, and made a December 2006 release in the Japanese, Australian, and European markets. The Wii should be close to the end of, if not its overall life cycle, the "prime" of its life cycle. Even if it had been completely state of the art when released, it has had five holiday shopping seasons; it is near semi-retirement (or full fledged retirement if the market isn't favorable).

Now on top of it just being "about that time", Nintendo has had fantastic success with the Wii... and you can't resell to everyone. Coupled with the above, by now most people who want a Wii have it, and I know quite a few have even sprung for it as a gift for family or friends! That's how great the market penetration is, there are just so few people left to buy it for the first time, and while there is a newer model available, it doesn't contain all the features of the original, so it is something of a niche item.

Now we get to the actual hardware and software. The Wii was designed to be "affordable", and I'd say it worked, but it was a trade off. As someone who doesn't fixate on graphics, even I know that what was "good" for the Wii was "poor" for the X-Box 360 and the PS3. Overall the improvements the Wii offered over the GameCube basically was a half-step for the visuals. I've always worried more about the "game" half of "video games", but for those who live and breathe (and buy and play) based on "eye candy", that was a huge issue. Still in the end, the hardware was showing its age when it released, so again you'd expect the Wii unit sales to be struggling.

It is the software sales where some surprise is merited. Nintendo has released a lot of filler, but you don't have to buy it so that isn't the only problem. Gaming has made some significant changes, some for the better and some for the worse. In principle I like DLC and the Virtual Console, but some aspects of it are really annoying. Plus gamers are burning through titles like never before, so it isn't unusual for someone to burn through the big holiday releases long before summer. If a system doesn't have multiple big titles coming out each quarter, it is perceived as a "drought". @_@

Then there is the Nintendo DS and the milking of it. Nintendo chose to get their money "up front" by releasing too many Nintendo DS revisions. Looking at it, the DS Lite should have been the "original", with the "brick" version being a prototype known only to fanboys, and either the DSi or the DSi XL, or perhaps even both should have been skipped. Coupled with the high initial price tag, it is no wonder the 3DS underperformed until the free game or price drop offer.

So really, I'd say Nintendo's future is mostly in its own hands. This is still not good news for them, but its bad news most of us saw coming. The real significance is it showed how overconfident Nintendo is again becoming... which preceded their last major decline during the N64/GameCube generations.
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Agreeing pretty much, this is the only reason Xbox 360 is only now finally starting to outsell the Wii; just about everyone who wants the Wii has one, and over the 6 years now it's been out, those kids that got it originally are now growing up and want the more "mature" systems for older kids, which are the 360 and PS3. Not to mention the price drops for those respective systems compared to when they were initially released. And of course the 3DS was priced wrong as well from the get-go, people are used to Nintendo being the more moderately priced one, not the one where their handheld costs more than their main console. And they didn't really make a point on it being that much more technologically advanced than the DS, heck I still mistakenly believe half the time they both have essentially the same guts in them because visually it just doesn't look like that much difference

Also let's stop the bankruptcy talk: this is the first time Nintendo is reporting a loss practically since it started selling videogames in the 80s I think (you can blame a strong yen too, but that's only hiding the other problems Nintendo has). Heck, I'd even wager if it weren't for the fact Microsoft and Sony are basically conglomerates and have many other products/services they count toward profits, if you spun out the videogame part of those companies, they would've been reporting lots of losses during their first few years of existence. So there is literally zero chance of Nintendo ever going bankrupt in the foreseeable future considering they probably have lots of assets in the waiting; the absolute worst case scenario I can even think of for them is that they would end up going the way of Sega and transitioning into purely a software company, as the strength of their first party titles alone would allow it to go on indefinitely. But even that ain't gonna happen as long as they can sell their consoles to get people to buy their games on it.
 
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Nintendo operates different units of business. First and foremost they are a software company. That is their primary source of revenue and profits. Games like Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario Bros, Smash Bros, Pokemon, Zelda, they all sell 10's of millions of units. Secondly, they are a hardware company who produces systems like the DS, Wii, 3DS, and Wii U.
Lastly, they have all of their ancillary revenue streams which comes from merchandise like Pokemon cards.

When Nintendo holds earnings calls they repeatedly note changes in the software and hardware industry. Rarely do they ever touch on their merchandise. It is safe to bet that Pokemon TCG will remain untouched unless Nintendo becomes very desperate to cut cash...at which point they would also be filing for bankruptcy.

TL;DR... TCG will be fine. Although this new box ratios of 2 ex and 2 FA is garbage.
 
Nintendo is hurting big time right now, do not kid yourselves otherwise. That is also a big reason why the Seattle Mariners did not sign any big name free agents this off season. The 3DS has been a tremendous dissapointement for them. The rumor is that Nintendo is trying to unload the Mariners if they can find a buyer for them. When a copmany is struggleign nothing is off the table, There is no Gurentee that Pokemon Organized play will be a forever thing. I realy hope it is but Who ould have thought 10 years ago that GM would be streamlingned to the way it is now and lines like Ponitac would be no more. The only thing constant in life is change.
 
PokeMedic said:
Until you see Mario selling some type of insurance, then Nintendo is fine.
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I would buy insurance from Mario in a heartbeat :thumb:

Can't say the same thing about Sonic though...seriously I still do a wtf when I see those commercials :lol:
 
JandPDS: Nintendo has been "hurt" in the past and recovered. Ignoring their problems is foolish, but so is pronouncing a death sentence this soon. If you end up being correct and this is the beginning of the end, most will recognize it as "luck"; Nintendo entered the video game home market with doomsayers, so it is still like crying wolf.
 
Otaku said:
If you end up being correct and this is the beginning of the end, most will recognize it as "luck"; Nintendo entered the video game home market with doomsayers, so it is still like crying wolf.
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That's like saying, "you're wrong even if you're right." lol

I think the situation now is really different from way back among the first Nintendo doomsayers. The greatest change is that the technology Nintendo is pitching has become increasingly antiquated and obsolete and their revenue model no longer functions. $170 per limited device and $30 per game loses against $600 per versatile device everyone has and $0.99 per game.

We have smartphones and tablet computers that didn't exist back then and games have now become a $0.99 commodity. As many have pointed again and again, entire genres of videogames are no longer marketable product. No one needs to pay $20 for puzzle games or casual games any more because the 3DS is not the only device that can play videogames

We're in the middle of a huge technological revolution lead by smartphones and Nintendo will have to look far beyond the scope of gamers to be successful.
 
This always happens when a new console is on the horizon. Wait until Q4 2012's reports; that'll be good.
 
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