Nintendo Shares Drop the Most in Two Years

[roseofbattle]

Nintendo Shares Drop the Most in Two Years

Excluded from the Nikkei 225 Stock Average, Nintendo hits a stock shares slump.

Nintendo transferred its listing from Osaka to Tokyo for making its stock eligible for review by Nikkei, the most widely quoted average of Japanese equities, but the company fell short. Nintendo shares fell 8.4 percent when Asia-Pacific markets cut stock to sell upon seeing it was not included in the Nikkei 225. Previously Nintendo gained 31 percent and many market analysts believed it would be promoted in the annual index review for the Nikkei 225.

"We believe Nintendo's shares have been overvalued due to speculative demand, on the assumption that they would be included in the Nikkei," Takao Suzuki, an analyst at BNP Paribas SA in Tokyo, said. "As this expectation has come to nothing, this appears to be the right time to sell."

Nikkei 225 membership is reviewed once a year, usually in the fall, and it is often implemented by October of that year. Had Nintendo been added, it could have been the fourth-most influential stock on the Nikkei 225, behind Fast Retailing Co., Softbank Corp, and Fanuc Corp.

"The early signs of key first-party software inducing a major turnaround in Wii U console fundamentals are not promising," Jay Defibaugh, an analyst at CLSA in Tokyo, said. "The value of iconic Nintendo franchises may be declining as younger generations discover gaming through mobile devices."

Combined sales for Nintendo hardware totaled 1.8 million units in one quarter ending this June, down from 3.1 million units last year. The company has "struggled to adapt to a consumer shift to smartphones and tablet computers," Bloomberg reported.

Source: Polygon [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-09/nintendo-slumps-after-stock-excluded-from-nikkei-tokyo-mover.html]

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[Phrozenflame500]

Considering the Wii U's current struggling sales, I'm not surprised. Still, I'm still betting on it recovering once Nintendo starts churning out Mario/Zelda.

 

[EvilRoy]

The company has "struggled to adapt to a consumer shift to smartphones and tablet computers," Bloomberg reported.

How can anyone say that Nintendo has struggled to adapt to smartphones and tablets with a straight face, when the 3DS (Nintendo's product most in competition with smartphones and tablets) has been the best selling games system for months now, and is getting close to 40 million units sold. And still has a new Pokemon game on the horizon to explode sales even further.

I imagine the statement has to do with how well Nintendos numbers match up. The 3DS is doing really well for a device that can only play games, but it is not even close to competing with the numbers for smartphones, and WiiU is not doing great either when compared to tablets.

In 2Q2013 Samsung sold 71 million (up), Apple sold 31 million (down), and the 2Q2013 totals are estimated at 221 million (global) smartphones. Even if only 1/4th of the units sold in Q2 are purchases for people who never owned a smartphone before, and 1/4 of those people use their smartphone as their only/primary mobile gaming system, that is still 14 million units in a single quarter - more than a third of the 3DS lifetime sales.

Android tablets sold 28 million in 2Q2013, while the WiiUs sales sat at 4 million over its lifetime. This is doubly damning as while smartphones are conceivably used primarily for phone-stuff, and therefore we can argue down how much of their sales count as competition to the 3DS, tablets are primarily designed and used for internet and games placing them firmly into a competitive position with any gaming system.

 

[Doom972]

The company has "struggled to adapt to a consumer shift to smartphones and tablet computers," Bloomberg reported.

How can anyone say that Nintendo has struggled to adapt to smartphones and tablets with a straight face, when the 3DS (Nintendo's product most in competition with smartphones and tablets) has been the best selling games system for months now, and is getting close to 40 million units sold. And still has a new Pokemon game on the horizon to explode sales even further.

The stock market is such a shitty way to gauge success nowadays, given how it runs off hearsay, rumour and generally unsubstantiated info. It's like basing a company's financial success on tarot cards, or tea leaf readings, without the plus side of a decent cup of tea/some pretty pictures.

I can say from a personal viewpoint that it's certainly why I don't have a 3DS right now.

I used to like Nintendo handhelds. I have a Gameboy Color and a Gameboy Advance. When Nintendo released the 3DS and Sony released the PSP, I chose the PSP, only to find out later that the DS had some really interesting titles, but I didn't want to invest in another handheld.

Once smartphones and tablets came into existence, these handhelds started to seem unnecessary, since I could get many games, including old console games by the use of emulators.

Nintendo's domination in the handheld market did a lot for their income. Once many people, like myself, moved on to smartphones and tablets, Nintendo lost a lot of its income.

 

[weirdee]

eh, i guess the argument that you could make is that people needed a portable computing/organizer device that kind of plays games more than they needed a device that plays games with actual buttons but doesn't really do anything else besides the stuff most devices can do (play music, watch videos, take pictures)

 

[Yuuki]

They are not releasing enough Mario/Zelda titles fast enough, that's why. I can't believe Nintendo is in such a position despite having some of the most guaranteed-to-print-money franchises/IPs in the world. The production of those games needs to be sped up.

 

[Drauger]

Just drop from the console business already Nintendo , we all want to play your cool franchises, but let's face it, we cant't stand your crappy consoles.

 

[Drauger]

Just drop from the console business already Nintendo , we all want to play your cool franchises, but let's face it, we cant't stand your crappy consoles.

Did I elect you to speak for everyone?

Just sigh...... let me correct it : we the people who rather play in a smartphone/tablet cause don't care for your consoles and for that reason your stocks are falling all the way down to the underworld, we the ones tired of having to buy your consoles just because you make amazing games but never seeing anything good from any other 3rd party developer, we the ones that are tired of you squeezing every penny you can from lots of obsolete gadgets and dumb peripherals, we the ones tired of you using old tech because " creativity it's everything that matters" and not being able to pull a game with good graphics or a decent online gaming, tired of your crappy controller can't be played 4 hours straight without it needed to be recharged, not a part of us? ok then don't count yourself in, there are we good now?

Snip

So according to your logic since the CD-I still works fine then it's not a piece of crap ? who's talking about manufacturing quality ? I thought it was implied that I meant the awful game lineup, crappy game line up = crappy system IMO, how can the console race be dull if it doesn't matter if Nintendo is not even in the race?

Don't get me wrong I love some Nintendo franchises, but I'm just tired of buying a console and accessories just to play this 3 or 4 franchises.

 

[Scarim Coral]

It's a good thing I don't have their share (my parent are into stocktaking and share related stuff) but in saying so I would of taken it off during the Wii U sales.

 

[cerebus23]

I think the main problem they had was people snapping up stock at inflated prices driving the value of the company up in hopes they would be accepted so people could cash in. hence why the stock exchange rejected them.

Bloomburg was the one that was dogging their sales in the current market.

 

[Doom972]

I can say from a personal viewpoint that it's certainly why I don't have a 3DS right now.

I used to like Nintendo handhelds. I have a Gameboy Color and a Gameboy Advance. When Nintendo released the 3DS and Sony released the PSP, I chose the PSP, only to find out later that the DS had some really interesting titles, but I didn't want to invest in another handheld.

Once smartphones and tablets came into existence, these handhelds started to seem unnecessary, since I could get many games, including old console games by the use of emulators.

Nintendo's domination in the handheld market did a lot for their income. Once many people, like myself, moved on to smartphones and tablets, Nintendo lost a lot of its income.

Did Nintendo lose income though? The sort of games they make for handhelds tend not to be readily available on smartphones anyway. Does smartphone gaming have its equivalent to Fire Embem Awakening? Or Luigi's Mansion 2? Or Mario 3D Land?

No, but they have their own popular titles. There are more than enough popular indie games for it, and also there are emulators.

The majority of games bought on smartphones are $0.99 throwaway games of little value. There isn't yet a real market for $40-60 games on smartphones. If Nintendo released something like Fire Emblem Awakening on iOS, there is no guarantee of any kind that it would sell better than it already has, given how smartphone users seem to steer away from larger, more expensive games.

Most people, and probably most gamers wouldn't want to invest that much money in games that they play on the go (or on the toilet). Most would rather invest such amounts of money in games for their PC/home console. Having $60 games doesn't help the poor condition that the 3DS is in. Maybe Nintendo should learn from its relatively new competitors on the handheld market.

Using emulators isn't really an argument in itself, given that emulators themselves are only supposed to be used for games you already own, and using emulators to play games you never bought is essentially piracy.

If it's an older game that you can't buy anymore, I'd say that it's legitimate. Getting it for a bloated price on eBay without any sort of warranty doesn't count. If Nintendo had made their older games available for Android devices for $0.99, maybe they wouldn't be in the mess that they're currently in. If they don't make their games available, how do they expect people to buy them?

People won't buy an over-priced single-purpose handheld with overpriced games when the alternative of smartphones and tablets exist.

 

[MrBaskerville]

I´m very close at buying a 3DS (and perhaps later a WiiU if it kicks off), it just seems like all the interesting stuff that appeals to me has moved to handhelds and WiiU while the big consoles are looking more and more boring for each day. So needless to say, i hope they can turn this whole thing around.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

meh, stock prices are pretty much irrelevant, especially when you consider Nintendo's gigantic money reserves. The problem with stock is that it's an abstract concept. It's NOT actual money.

 

[Doom972]

No, but they have their own popular titles. There are more than enough popular indie games for it, and also there are emulators.

Firsty, emulators are not an argument, given that the games you're emulating are games that companies like Nintendo and Sega made themselves for their systems, not games developed for smartphones. Secondly, as good as indie games have gotten, very few approach the sort of scope that FE: Awakening or Shin Megami Tesei IV have.

They are an argument, because like it or not, people use them to play older games. Many have already surpassed these games. I played Fire Emblem for the GBA and I have enjoyed many indie games on my smartphone much more than that game. Some of them were even free. Don't know much about Shin Megami Tensei.

Most people, and probably most gamers wouldn't want to invest that much money in games that they play on the go (or on the toilet). Most would rather invest such amounts of money in games for their PC/home console. Having $60 games doesn't help the poor condition that the 3DS is in. Maybe Nintendo should learn from its relatively new competitors on the handheld market.

I... erm... what? The 3DS is beasting right now. It's the best selling system on the market. How can it be in poor condition if it's selling more than any other system, and its software regularly sits in the upper echelons of the sales charts? Have you seen those sales figures for Animal Crossing New Leaf?

Best selling at its own market? Yes, the 3DS is the leading system in the 3DS market. It's bought by 100% of its consumers.
At the handheld market, which includes smartphones and tablets, it's only a fraction bought by a devoted niche.

If it's an older game that you can't buy anymore, I'd say that it's legitimate. Getting it for a bloated price on eBay without any sort of warranty doesn't count. If Nintendo had made their older games available for Android devices for $0.99, maybe they wouldn't be in the mess that they're currently in. If they don't make their games available, how do they expect people to buy them?

Nintendo have made their older games available. It's called the Virtual Console. You can buy older games to play on Wii, 3DS and Wii U, at a fraction of what they'd cost on eBay.

I've tried playing Super Mario World on a smartphone. It was terrible. Why wouldn't you want to play a game like that on a system with actual buttons and controls?

Having to buy a seperate system for that purpose makes it useless. People already invested in multi-purpose handheld devices and don't want to carry another one around for certain games. Remember that we're talking about gaming on the go.

People won't buy an over-priced single-purpose handheld with overpriced games when the alternative of smartphones and tablets exist.

Except that they are. As already stated, the 3DS is currently the best selling games system in the world. In Japan, it is dominating the rest of the hardware market. In the rest of the word, the fact that it's still managing to track close to the original DS (the best selling handheld ever) shows that smartphones haven't had that much of an effect on handheld gaming. If they had, it wouldn't even be tracking close to the Gameboy, let alone the DS.

Best selling games system? As in, not just handhelds? Compare those sale prices to PCs and Macs (desktops and laptops) or tablets and smartphones and it'll look much different. Not all of them are used for playing games, but the sheer difference between the numbers assures that they easily surpass the 3DS even after subtracting the large non-gaming portion of the sales.

 

[Allspice]

If it's an older game that you can't buy anymore, I'd say that it's legitimate. Getting it for a bloated price on eBay without any sort of warranty doesn't count. If Nintendo had made their older games available for Android devices for $0.99, maybe they wouldn't be in the mess that they're currently in. If they don't make their games available, how do they expect people to buy them?

A lot of them are being made available, they're on Nintendo's eShop. Unless you're going to go after Sony too about putting PS1 games on smartphones/tablets instead of their dedicated store, I don't see a reason to criticize Nintendo for that.

Besides, I can't imagine playing any of those games (from either company) with just a touchscreen. Most of the games I play on my phone are a little iffy on their controls, how can you play platformers effectively like that? Or anything that requires quick reflexes for that matter? It would be such a chore to get through any of them that it wouldn't be worth your time.