Nintendo lowers Shipping estimates; Mario sales expectations not met
 

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Nintendo lowers shipping and profit forecast

By Michiyo Nakamoto in Tokyo
Published: October 1 2002 12:05 | Last Updated: October 1 2002 12:05

Nintendo confirmed growing worries about its performance with the announcement on Tuesday that shipments of its games consoles this year would be lower than initially forecast.

The group said shipments of GameCube, would be 10m rather than 12m and those of Game Boy Advance would be 15m rather than 19m, due to weaker than expected demand amid the Japanese economic slump.

Nintendo also lowered its full-year recurring profit forecast from Y150bn ($1.23bn) to Y110bn and net profit from Y90bn to Y80bn.

Nintendo said, however that shipments of GameCube software would be 55m units rather than the forecast 36m because third party games had been selling better than expected.

In the first half, Nintendo expects a sharp drop in recurring profits, or 77 per cent below its initial forecast, due to the yen's rise against the US dollar.

Nintendo said that its first half group recurring profit would be Y7bn rather than an initially forecast Y30bn due to a large appraisal loss on foreign currency based assets.

However, Nintendo still expects to achieve its forecast group net profit of Y18bn in the first half, thanks to a one-off gain from its sale of Rare, the game developer. Nintendo has sold its 49 per cent stake in the games developer to Microsoft.

Satoru Iwata, president, said the group aims to raise its share of the US market from 20 per cent, to over 30 per cent after the Christmas shopping season but had no intention of reducing the price of GameCube, its latest console.

Nintendo has had a difficult time with its new consoles, which have not had the big push from popular titles that is crucial for hardware sales.

In particular, Super Mario Sunshine, the latest game developed by games legend Shigeru Miyamoto, has not lived up to the initial high expectations that had built up around it. This is one of GameCube's most important titles and was launched in August, but it has not seen the huge following Mr Miyamoto's titles have enjoyed in the past.

"We are concerned that [technical and design problems] may keep the game from becoming the perpetually best-selling, 10-million unit classic that Super Mario 64 was," said Noriko Manabe, games analyst at JP Morgan in Tokyo.

Ms Manabe is also concerned that Super Mario Sunshine did not seem to be "moving that much hardware".

The concerns about Nintendo's software line-up were aggravated by its decision to sell its 49 per cent stake in Rare, which had provided many of Nintendo's hit games in the past. Although Rare has not delivered as significantly recently, the sale, "almost guarantees that XBox is going to be number 2 in Europe," said Ms Manabe.

Wow... they must be some Strong Rare followers in Europe :D

Ouch. :unsure:

yeah... ouch... whatever.... they got metroid and zelda commin out soon right? Those should sell a lot of consoles...

Isn't that what people said about Resident Evil? And then Mario? :p

yeah but resident evil isnt as big as like zelda and metroid ... IMO :p

That's what always happens Deathshand. :)

True, but people said it... now what about Mario? ;)

People before NGC was released: "NGC will be awesome! I will take Nintendo back to the glory days of SNES!"

*NGC is released and slows down a bit*

People: "Well, Resident Evil should help jumpstart the sales!"

*Resident Evil is released*

People: "... hmm... Well, Mario should help jumpstart the sales!"

*Mario is released*

People: "... Zelda and Metroid are coming out soon, they will sell a lot of systems!"

;)

I'm not saying Mush necesarily said all that, I just find it funny, piecing together things I've heard from before NGC was released to the present... :sneaky:

No way Metriod out-sells Mario... unless it's one of those rare 9.8-10.0 games. Zelda may pick up sales, but then again, it could do like Mario because Nintendo made major changes to the game.

Hmm, it's pretty much what I had expected, there arent many "killer" titles in Japan ...there's SMS, it was selling great for a while, but I guess it has slowed down now.
And I can see why RE didnt sell that well, I mean, its pretty good and the RE series is pretty big in Japan, but something tells me that RE's exclusiveness to GCN was the reason for the "bad" sales.


Still, it's too early to judge GCN's fate, it hasn't even been out for a year (well it has in Japan but meh.) It still has a good 5 years left so we shall see how the future unfolds.

i have enjoyed SSB:M, SMS, ED, and RE on GCN so far, and thats all that matters to me. Metroid Prime looks awesome, PSO looks like great fun, Eternal Arcadia Legend so far sounds amazing, and i cant wait for Zelda. so right now, i have little to no problems with GCN. keep em coming

That's Sony's decision... just Hope Soy waits on Ps3... or GCN only got a good 2-3 years left before it gets real competition.

i agree with you in theory

What did Nintendo expect?? For SMS to rip sales charts and hit 20 million?? Please?? I'm sure sunshine is great.....but what about all that hype it had about innovative it would be.

Hey let's put a water pack on Mario's back and stuff.....Phsff ...really inovative Nintendo....All SMS is, is an upgrade to SM64.....so I hope they didn't expect it to sell at the same rate or same amount.

Besides all of this is basically Nintendo's falut anyways...if they'd stop being so damn secretive and tell people what the hell they are making......and what's going on with their 1st and 2nd parties maybe they wouldn't have this problem.
But then again maybe they might who knows.

All I know is that Nintendo better get something inovative and great really fast or they might end up no.3 in this console war.
( or maybe they should just put Shiggy back to mainly making games instead of him managing other people's stuff)

Uh, I think Nintendo will still keep GC out for a normal five year period. The Ps2 was out for over a year before its competition came.