Nintendo's Record Year: 150% Jump in Operating Profit

[A Black Falcon]

I almost forgot to mention my two cents on Metroid and totally ignore this thread's topic. It's going to be neat, and not just any neat. I believe Nintendo is going to position it head to head with Halo 3. Now there's a saying in the business of entertainment called jumping the shark, it means going way out of the box of what the story (or gameplay) usually adheres to. I think Metroid 3 is gonna jump the shark with multiplayer. I think there's gonna be Metroid Hunters/Corruption DS connectivity, I think there's going to be in-game voice chat (western game) and I think it's going to blatantly say 'I'm Nintendo's answer to Halo multiplayer'.

And i'm not entirely sure it'll be a good thing. But I dunno what Nintendo's option is as far as first person shooters to compete and offer a different flavor. But you know Nintendo understands how beneficial a FPS is, Goldeneye and the original PD are still popular today and 'everyone' played Ge on the 'distant 3rd place system', even people who hate Nintendo played Ge (and to a lesser extent PD, even though its a superior game).

You're also confusing the N64 and GC, Lazy. The N64 was second place, not third. Also, it did pretty well in the US...

Worldwide - PSX 100 million; N64 32 million; Saturn 10 million

US - PSX 35+ million; N64 20 million; Saturn 2 million

Comparatively, the GC...
Worldwide - PS2 - 100+ million; Xbox - 24 million; GC - 20 million; Dreamcast 10 million

US - PS2 - 37 million; Xbox - ?; GC - 12 million; DC- ?

The Xbox hit Nintendo's marketshare hard, I think (the SNES had only sold 22 million in the US; the total hardware sales number drop from the SNES to N64 wasn't large, actually. The PSX just found a market Nintendo wasn't able to target and crushed Nintendo utterly in Japan and Europe...). The N64 had been strong in some genres American audiences like -- FPSes, racing games, etc -- and the Xbox took those markets. The GC had few Western third-party exclusive games; the N64 had many more. Nintendo can't completely get that back, not with the X360 focusing so strongly on FPSes and having the graphics that many hardcore gamers want, but it can certainly do a lot better than the GC... and I mean with gamers, not just with new audiences. I agree, Metroid is a hugely important title for this.

That is the biggest "if" I have ever seen. Seriously. I can't see the top of it because the clouds block my view.

I cant see a single scenario where Blu-Ray comes out of this alive. It baffles the mind, think about it. Why are you going to pay for a new (and thus, expensive) peice of hardware and movies (not to mention REBUYING those you already own), for a format which offers only marginal improvement on the current standard? DVD surpassed VHS because it was superior by leaps and bounds, with menus, scene skipping, extra features and all that. Blu-Ray is basically DVD+. A format that does have it advantages, but ones that the normal market doesn't really care about. There are always those hardcore fans (lazy, I'm sure you're one), who demands nothing but the best video and sound quality possible. That is the minority, though. Most people just want to watch a movie, and they have a DVD player perfectly capable of doing just that.

Blu-Ray is a joke.

Oh, absolutely -- it is a huge, huge "if", and you're probably right that Sony isn't going to manage to pull it off. I was stating the theory, not saying that it's going to happen... :)

I do think that Blu-Ray is outselling HD-DVD, though... the real question is if consumers care about either one. At this point, I would say no. HD-DVD/Blu-Ray won't catch on like DVD did, you're right. Still, videophiles and others will eventually get one or the other, and that few percentage of people with HDTVs who actually can figure out which cables to get to get the best picture quality and actual HD will want one to see the difference...

... yeah, not too big a market there... well, Sony just has to hope that people buy Blu-Ray stuff for their HDTVs and buy the discs even though they're only getting 480p because they're using the composite cables and don't know the difference (or see much of a change from DVD), I guess. :)

The PS2 was sold at a loss as well, but it turned a good profit. The reason for this was that it achieve a high enough market penetrations to sell huge amounts of games in all three major territories. My point being, that if the PS3 only sells 30-40 million units in its lifetime there's no way it can sell enough games to turn a profit.

Exactly. Though at this rate, 30-40 million is looking pretty optimistic...