Nintendo Will Make a Billion Dollars From Amiibo Sales, Claims Analyst

[Steven Bogos]

Nintendo Will Make a Billion Dollars From Amiibo Sales, Claims Analyst

Analysts estimate Nintendo will make a $297 million profit this year.

It doesn't seem that long ago that we were reporting on Nintendo's analyst report from Bloomberg [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/134309-Nintendo-Reports-455-Million-Loss-But-Has-High-Hopes-For-Next-Year], it looks like the company will again have a reason to celebrate this Christmas.

At least eight analysts have raised profit estimates or ratings since September, with the two most recent calling for the company's profit to triple to 36.8 billion yen ($297 million) by the year's end. Furthermore, analysts predict that Nintendo's selling out so fast people think they've been discontinued [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/137145-Nintendo-Amiibos-up-for-pre-order-for-12-99], are set to bring in the company a billion dollars in profit from US sales alone.

"Nintendo has picked up good momentum heading into the Christmas season," said Tomoaki Kawasaki, a Tokyo-based analyst with Iwai Cosmo Securities Co., who raised his rating to neutral plus last month. "This time they have a hit lineup. Amiibo represents a new revenue source, and we are watching it very closely."

But it's not all toys that Nintendo has to thank for its success: Super Smash Bros. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/super%20smash%20bros?os=super+smash+bros] for Wii U sold 490,000 units in just three days in the US, the fastest pace ever for the console in the market.

Is Nintendo back? Can we finally put all that "Nintendo is dying" doom and gloom behind us? I'd like to hope so!

Source: Bloomberg [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-07/nintendo-heads-for-best-holiday-in-years-as-profit-seen-tripling.html]

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[Dark Knifer]

Isn't 36.8 billion yen more like $303 million dollars?

That's still good but nowhere near as spectacular as the headline indicates.

My maths could be wrong though.

 

[JoJo]

Isn't 36.8 billion yen more like $303 million dollars?

That's still good but nowhere near as spectacular as the headline indicates.

My maths could be wrong though.

No, you're right, I was about to say that too. That and the opening line mistakenly quotes the 36.8 billion yen profit in dollars >.>

Time to hire a new editor Escapist?

 

[Steven Bogos]

Isn't 36.8 billion yen more like $303 million dollars?

That's still good but nowhere near as spectacular as the headline indicates.

My maths could be wrong though.

No, you're right, I was about to say that too. That and the opening line mistakenly quotes the 36.8 billion yen profit in dollars >.>

Time to hire a new editor Escapist?

Ouch! My bad, those conversions are confusing sometimes. Fixed!

 

[seditary]

Has anyone checked on Pachter, I hope he's alright with all this news of Nintendo's predicted windfall.

 

[FFMaster]

Is Nintendo back? Can we finally put all that "Nintendo is dying" doom and gloom behind us? I'd like to hope so!

Well considering Nintendo has been "dying" for years, despite being profitable for all but 1 of them, while Sony is apparently doing great despite making massive losses for multiple years while having to sell of parts of its business, I suspect Nintendo will still be dying because reasons.

Part of the reasons is how its treated in the press, its rare to have a Nintendo story without some sort of doom being mentioned, even when they have good news!

 

[Gladion]

Considering they're gonna make at least one billion Dollars off of me with the darn things, I believe that number is accurate.

 

[Therumancer]

Meh, to be honest it seems like Nintendo simply playing "Follow The Leader" in terms of a market already created and exploited via Skylanders and Disney Infinity. Their only real innovation here seems to be in their planning to release a lot of compatible games in the future, in a way presenting more potential content than what comes with the "base" games albeit for more money since you have to buy each game and each figure rather than a base/game once and then the figures and expansions. That said this is dependent on Nintendo reliably releasing a constant infrastructure of products and to be honest I'm not sure if they will be able to do that quite like they plan. Not to mention the competition in this space already, as they are basically going head to head with figure based products aimed at a "family" audience that are already well established and using platforms a bit more popular than the Wii U. It's possible the analysts are right, but if I was Nintendo I wouldn't be making plans for the windfall yet.

Now, if I was running a gaming company right now and wanted to make an effort at getting money out of this fad, I'd be aiming to capture an older or more "mature" audience. One thing that I think holds these games back so far is that they are too kiddy, and while you have some adults that like this stuff, it seems a lot even admit to being a bit embarrassed due to the presentation and target audience. Looking at the success of collectors figures and such aimed at adults, such as various Mcfarlane toys lines, direct-to-convention figures, and expensive miniature modeling hobbies like you see through things like Warhammer 40k and it's various tie ins, and how high the resale market for some of this stuff can go, it seems like a natural market to tap. Imagine for example if someone decided to say team up with Todd Mcfarlane and create a larger, more free roam oriented "Dark Souls" like game based on his "Twisted Land Of Oz" figures/comics where you would use creepy and sexed up figures like that aimed at a non-kiddie audience on a base to unlock what you play as. Or say a "Spawn" game instead of Marvel using figures again of the quality and orientation of one of his lines where you can play as Spawn or numerous other warped characters from that extended universe (of which there are a lot). The point is there is a lot of potential for doing things here to aim at a collector's market as well as tap into gaming demographics outside of the family friendly one. Mcfarlane's figure lines are just one example among many as you see a lot of cool figure sets being created and doing quite well for the time they are out there aimed at a non-kiddy audience... and of course displaying a collection of figures like that is a bit less embarrassing to older kids and adults than say lining up your Skylanders.

If someone announced a partnership between say Mcfarlane Toys and a big game publisher, that's when I'd start believing claims about people making billions easily.

This is purely my opinion though, and one thing about the mentality of game businesses nowadays is that they all tend to wind up doing the same exact thing and fighting for the same piece of the pie. It's rare, or at least ridiculously slow, to see companies even try different spins on these ideas. As I said, while I could be wrong, it seems like Nintendo is trying to poke it's snout into the same trough Skylanders and Disney are slurping from, maybe there is enough in there for them too... but I wouldn't be quite so optimistic yet. I think the real winners will be the ones to tap the basic idea from a different direction and go after a different audience with the same basic idea, to avoid having to fight with the others already established for the family/kiddie audience.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Oh God, does this mean both Sony and Microsoft are gonna start making these damn figurine games too? Considering the state Sony is in, I'm afraid they will.

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

Well, I don't really see the point, but I guess I have been eyeing those Halo:Reach action figures for a few years. These amiibos seem too small and un-posable for me, but if people like them then I guess good job to Nintendo for coming up with it.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Well considering Nintendo has been "dying" for years, despite being profitable for all but 1 of them, while Sony is apparently doing great despite making massive losses for multiple years while having to sell of parts of its business, I suspect Nintendo will still be dying because reasons.

Part of the reasons is how its treated in the press, its rare to have a Nintendo story without some sort of doom being mentioned, even when they have good news!

It is kinda funny at how so many people have such a bizarro view of the world. Despite Nintendo basically being the ONLY major publisher to make it out of the last generation in the black (and REALLY in the black at that) people still try to perpetuate this myth of them being in trouble and latch onto ANY scraps they can find for way too long.

Also, I wonder if the analysts made a mistake or something. A billion from the Amiibo's in the US alone? That seems bizarrely high; I wonder if they meant a billion YEN. I dunno, but the Amiibo line should probably make them a pretty penny regardless

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Oh God, does this mean both Sony and Microsoft are gonna start making these damn figurine games too? Considering the state Sony is in, I'm afraid they will.

I don't think so, the concept works for Nintendo for the same reason Super Smash does, they have a HUGE library of exclusive characters to draw from (it also helps that the figures don't look half bad so have an appeal to collectors as well as people who want to use them for their intended purpose). [footnote]Disney also has this benefit[/footnote]. Sony may try, but they don't have nearly the character list these days.

I'd put my money on more regular developers with big franchises (like Square Enix) taking a piece of Activision's pie.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Oh God, does this mean both Sony and Microsoft are gonna start making these damn figurine games too? Considering the state Sony is in, I'm afraid they will.

I don't think so, the concept works for Nintendo for the same reason Super Smash does, they have a HUGE library of exclusive characters to draw from (it also helps that the figures don't look half bad so have an appeal to collectors as well as people who want to use them for their intended purpose). Sony may try, but they don't have nearly the character list these days.

That didn't stop 'm with Playstation All-Stars. Disney copied it from Activision, and Nintendo copied it from Disney, resulting in huge succes for all three. There's no reason for that bug not to spread to at least Sony.

 

[bdcjacko]

When will people learn that Nintendo will do what it wants and never die?

 

[Baresark]

Is Nintendo back? Can we finally put all that "Nintendo is dying" doom and gloom behind us? I'd like to hope so!

Well considering Nintendo has been "dying" for years, despite being profitable for all but 1 of them, while Sony is apparently doing great despite making massive losses for multiple years while having to sell of parts of its business, I suspect Nintendo will still be dying because reasons.

Part of the reasons is how its treated in the press, its rare to have a Nintendo story without some sort of doom being mentioned, even when they have good news!

This is exactly my feelings on the matter. The press will throw accolades at the company for some of it's moves and games, and then 5 minutes later they have an article saying how Nintendo is definitely dying.

The issue is that the press does not think about tomorrow or yesterday, they only think or care about today. Today Nintendo is doing awesome. Tomorrow they may be doing terrible (for reasons), and the new projections only encompass what they think of tomorrow. It's ridiculous and shows the general gaming press is not that informed about fiscal economies.

OT: Glad to hear it I guess. I hate this figure collecting bullshit though. It's just a way of inflating the price of playing certain games. Though I did read they plan on using them in different games too though, which is neat. Unlike Skylanders or Infinity, they could utilize them in more than one game a year, which could be cool. Kind of reminds me how Sega used the Sonic and Knuckles cartridge a bit back in the day. Even if you couldn't use it in a game, it had some kind of cool interaction such as with Mortal Kombat. It would say it wasn't compatible but show an image of Sonic and Knuckles hanging out with the MK characters.

 

[Rednog]

I'm on the fence, I finally caved and got a WiiU during blackfriday because it was a decent deal. But I still stand behind Nintendo's consoles essentially being pretty only useful for 1st party titles. Its fine and all, and I've had some fun, but I sure as shit will never be my primary gaming platform. Good for nintendo for tapping another money making vein, though I really wish they'd restock stores with them, went around looking for a Link Amiibo all day, damn near every store was pretty much Donkey Kong and Kirby.

I also wish they would just have a standard controller like the PS4 and Xbox and actually have them work properly with their games. I've tried the pro controller, but some imputs are just terrible, Y+R pressed exactly together to grab an enemy and throw them in New Super Mario Bros...why. Just make it R.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I don't think so, the concept works for Nintendo for the same reason Super Smash does, they have a HUGE library of exclusive characters to draw from (it also helps that the figures don't look half bad so have an appeal to collectors as well as people who want to use them for their intended purpose).Sony may try, but they don't have nearly the character list these days.

I'd put my money on more regular developers with big franchises (like Square Enix) taking a piece of Activision's pie.

As seen with Playstation All-Stars in which people were shown just how few icons Sony's IP pool has. Seriously, how many 3rd parties did Sony have to yank from in order to pad out the roster? Meanwhile Nintendo with SSB has a GIGANTIC roster and despite that people want MORE characters that they know Nintendo could put in. If Sony tried the NFC figure thing it'd probably fail due to the lack of recognizable mascot characters in the company's roster.

 

[squeebles12]

Am I the only person still slightly confused about what an amiibo is? As well as the fact that they missed a brilliant naming oppurtunity by not naming the things an Amiigo? C'mon think about it!