So how dire is Nintendo's situation, really?

I have yet to see any level headed info on this topic. Most articles are just journalists reacting to low Wii U sales in relation to the smartphone gaming boom, without looking at the overall picture.

Some of the posters here probably have better knowledge and perspective than most journalists on the topic, so I want to hear what you all think.

Is Nintendo's current situation legitimately threatening to them? Or, as some claim, do they have more than enough finances to whether a Wii U flop?

The Wii and the DS were some of the most profitable pieces of video game hardware ever created. The 3DS is doing medicore but it's still making them some money. Nintendo has said that each Wii U sold is sold at a profit now. They may not be selling many of them but at least they aren't losing them money.

Overall the DS and Wii can more than make up for their lack of sales performance with the Wii U. Nintendo is good for now at the very least.

inb4 speaklow with his doom and gloom.

All 3 companies are/will be fine.

Once they get Zelda, Pokemon, Metroid and Starfox out the gate they will be alright. They've had their consoles get creamed before and came back. They can do it again. We'll all be laughing about this in two or three years.

Um 4 of the top 5 best selling pieces of hardware in Japan last week were 3DS's and Pokemon sold over 3 million copies in 3 days worldwide without Europe. And I can't remember a time where the 3DS wasn't the best selling game platform in Japan. Let's be real here.

The WiiU will make money by end of gen me thinks.

The situation of consoles an sich is (slowly) becoming 'dire'.

The benefits of consoles vs PC's are dwindling. Support for PC games keep growing and it has more, better and a bigger variation of games, it keeps becoming easier to do, it performs better and payment plans to pay per month instead of up front are now slowly popping up (still very expensive but they will get there). On top of that, people grow up using PC's and smartphones now and the open nature of the platform allows for more community support and content.

The closed platform of consoles means there is one very big company to pay on top of all the others. So console gaming will always be more expensive for the fanatic gamers. Consoles won't be able to compete with prices, but will have to offer something uniquely theirs if they want to last. That is tough to do because with most things PC's could do it too within months of time, and often better.

This is why I hope Nintendo will find a way to continue to exist with their exclusives (which is a very good start obviously) in an out of the box/blue way. I lost hope for Sony and MS. They seem hypnotizzled by graphs. I suppose they will respond when they see this situation reflected by their sales. Thing is, if you notice it during a 5 year generation for which you have to prepare years ahead... When you're steering a big ship it's better to see ahead than to respond when the ship hits an iceberg. It's better to understand the market than base things off of history which will only ever be a model at best for tomorrow. Suppose with the right marketing you can sell without offering much of anything anyway (as some are kinda doing right now) but I wouldn't consider console gaming to be a real part of the gaming industry when that happens. That only makes for frustrating/fun sales stories, but nothing real.

Nintendo is doomed.

i am most definitely the most knowledgeable poster in these realms and can confirm to u that kidtendo is in fact doomed. they rely on nostalgia to sell their 30 year old franchises but the original nes owners are now super old and getting near the age of death. sad i know, but its circle of life.

this concludes my findings. good day sir

Really?... You ask this about Nintendo?... Not sure how ignorant gamers are but Sony is in a much worse position with company recording breaking losses.

this gen is going to give them a bloody nose, no doubt about it.

they have backed the wrong horse twice now. 3D was not a big seller and they havent found a good used for a dual screen console setup.

they also mucked up the launches of both handhelds. the wiiu especially was a catastrophe. people were not sure if the wiiu was just a new controller for the wii for a period of time there....thats not a good way to launch a new console.

they need to dust down the plans for the nes, DS and wii again and try and find out why those were successful. they need to surprise and they need to deliver hardware that suits the games nintendo want to make.

they also need to greatly expand their development capacity and make development more efficent within the company (things i think they are working on).

are they doomed though? nah. if they can survive the gamecube then they can survive this. they just need to slog it out for a few more years, give the wiiu and 3DS a fair run (3DS is coming towards the end now mind...anything past 2016 is borrowed time) and make sure that, next time, they have a far more interesting porposition from their consoles AND have the games to back them up.

if they muck it up again next gen though then i will be more concerned. the cost of developing games will continue to rise....the cost of failure will be all the greater.

Maybe Disney will buy Nintendo and get them out of the console business for good.

And then the next KH could have a Master Key Sword Blade... thing.

But in all seriousness, I think Nintendo will end this gen doing fine yet far enough away from the competition to seriously reconsider their strategies for the next console. I have a feeling we'll see Nintendo have the more powerful (or at least very comparable) hardware again next gen.

@Grey_Eyed_Elf: that's because its obvious Sony is dying. Not even worth talking about.

Financial Nintendo are fine, Sony is the one thats at real risk of going under.

its not dire. Nintendo is fine. fanboys are just stupid. DO they really think a few million more consoles which are sold at a loss anyway are going to change the financials of billion dollar companies? as it stands MS and Nintendo have a crap ton of money, Sony is the only one in a dire financial situation, but it has nothing to do with playstation anyway. its mostly due to their consumer electronics and movie companies.

You're speaking from the perspective of a PC aficionado. PC gaming can be cheaper, if you're an expert on knowing where to find the best deals on gaming rigs so you can run games on their optimal settings, but the fact of the matter is that most people on average aren't tech savvy or don't care about PC gaming. That's why a huge majority of them bought the Wii over the PS3 or 360. They don't care about power. Same deal with the PS4 and Xbox One vs the PC. Most gamers in general really don't care if a PC can do it better because why waste $500-$1000 to buy a mid-range rig just to play Assassin's Creed when you can play the same game on a console that can provide the same experience with minimal differences in graphics? If you think about it, the trade-off isn't worth spending a few extra hundred over just for superficial crap. Spending a few hundred just for a graphics card every few years is just impractical, and may as well spend it on a console.

And then there's that learning curve with the interface...how many people feel comfortable using mouse/keyboard as their primary means of input? Not many and only the hardest of the core care about that kind of crap which is why most people prefer console gaming. Its plug-and-play pure and simple.

Sony is far too big and complex of a company to "go under". It's far more likely that Sony would be broken up into separate companies - which actually seems fairly inevitable.

Nintendo would actually be more likely to go under since their product offerings are so limited (i.e they are basically "all-in" in on video games). With Nintendo there is nothing to "break up". If Nintendo's hardware doesn't sell, they dont' have anywhere else to turn. They were in some serious doubt in the mid 2000's. Yes the DS and Wii were huge successes to save them, so that probably buys them at least 2 gens before it is even of concern. But when you throw a ton at R&D towards a couple of key hardware products, and those products are gaining very little market share, shit can go down really fast (see Sega).

At the end of the day it's not even of a concern this gen. Maybe in 5 years time we will see if Sony still can't turn it around, or Nintendo has to become software only. I don't see anything major like that happening before at least 2020, because I know Nintendo will give 1 more crack at hardware... and Playstation brand itself could easily be spun off to form a valuable company.

Sadly, this is true.

I'm not an expert (far from it), but I also know that even a profitable company can fail if it doesn't have the necessary cash flow.

Obviously, Nintendo isn't doing too well at the moment, but I don't believe they are in immediate danger. They will continue to show a very strong support for both of their consoles. That said, and taking into consideration that they are solely a video game company, I don't think they would survive -- in their current form at least -- another Wii U.

Actually, their credit rating from Fitch has improved from negative to stable so no, I really don't see them going away anytime soon.

If their next handheld underperforms even harder than the 3DS, that would be it for them.

Home consoles for are a dead end for them and handhelds are keeping them currently afloat but smartphones are eating their cake.

Hell, they lost over half of their cash reserves in the last 3 years iirc.

They are making money. When a company is making a profit, it is not in any trouble at all.

Sure, they lost market share compared to the Wii, but they also did with the N64 as well. And they still made money there too.

Eeehhhhh, I don't know if I'd completely agree with that.

I don't think profit should necessarily be the end-all determinant of whether a company is in trouble or not. Only recently has Nintendo began to bring a profit in (and keep in mind, mainly this was due to the majority of the U's back inventory being written off in the last FY). Blackberry was very profitable until they failed to see and refused to adapt to where the market was going, and Apple jumped on the opportunity and lack of vision. I think if anything, it's Nintendo's reluctance to change, insular nature, and general stubbornness that has the potential to place them in such a similarly precarious position if they are not careful.

Which in fact it has. They have lost a tremendous amount of marketshare, so they are in fact already like Blackberry to some degree. Thankfully for them, they had grown such a large bankroll from the Wii's success that they could lean on to help cushion against such situations, but that won't last forever. If they didn't have those billions from years ago, I highly doubt many would be so quick to dismiss concerns like this. If they don't make changes to the way they do business, eventually they will be in a very dire position.

whatever happens they must survive because less competition will suck and i think 2014 is a very good idea how it may be if Sony dominates in sales like it did. I don't want another 2014 ever.

@Meinhard1: I don't think Nintendo is going anywhere, but that's not necessarily bad or good. It's too early to jump to any conclusions, but my gut tells me that Nintendo is trying to just barely keep the Wii U's release calendar full enough that when they discontinue it, they can minimize how much bad karma rolls over onto their next system. I don't even think they are investing as much in their top-shelf titles as they were on the Gamecube and Wii, because it feels fruitless to try and release big, expensive games on a system that has thus far failed to find a market. Technically, Zelda U looks very unambitious compared to that tech demo Nintendo previously showed, and the biggest draws of the game thus far are all things that were introduced in other games, like the intelligent horses from Shadow of the Colossus and Red Dead Redemption, or the open worlds that are in just about every big budget adventure game (and said world doesn't look particularly impressive by modern standards on the Wii U hardware).

What's really disappointing is that Star Fox U sounds like it's going to be extremely rushed. I don't think Nintendo is putting nearly as much resources into it as they did past titles like Star Fox 64 and Assault, because they don't think it's worth it on a system with such a small install base. I thought Miyamoto was mistranslated when he said at E3 that he wanted to have a finished Star Fox game out in 2015 despite having nothing but a prototype, but tonight he reaffirmed that this is his exact intention, meaning that what we saw at E3 this year was probably a lot closer to his full "vision" of the game than what I'd initially thought. It's probably just a little goodie being tossed as an apology to the fans who bought the system and didn't get the experience they were promised, and I don't think Nintendo actually expects people to buy the system for it.

I know this may suck if you bought a Wii U, but I really think that 2015 is going to be the last year of legit big releases for the Wii U. The time for saving the system is long gone, and now Nintendo's only hope is that they can release their next system without the failure of the Wii U being an anchor around its neck.

Wii U will be the least favored console by the market, but Nintendo has enough sustenance to absorb the damage - 3DS is still a strong performer and Nintendo may still be able to salvage what they can by selling 20-30m units.

What comes after Wii U, though, is the true unknown. Make another console? Publish their console games on another's platform? Go mobile-only? It's impossible to say.

I am sure Nintendo is doing fine financially. It's more like Nintendo has lost a lot of fans and respect by relying on gimmicks and taking no risks.

nintendo is doomed because they have lost the ability to deliver what people actually want. their arrogance as a company is unmatched and will be a huge contributor to their eventual exiting out of the console market

Since they are releasing new hardware just for emerging markets, pretty bad.

No

They still dominate the handheld market, can literally live off of Japan's sales alone, and have plenty reserves from the success of last gen. If anything Wii U just riding this gen out and minimizing losses.

That's changing though. That's what I mean. Getting things to work on your cellphone is almost as difficult as getting things to work on your PC. People are becoming tech savvy and you don't need to buy a gaming PC in the cheapest places but they are easier to find with price comparison sites and builds are made for you by forums or by stores and put together for you by stores. It's getting there is what I'm saying. We're not there yet but PC gaming is taking great strides forward and console gaming is backpedaling by becoming more limited, more difficult to set up, the games don't always run well and you now have space requirements and a party system. The two are inevitably going to meet for most people.

Please be joking.

@JangoWuzHere:

Taking no risk ???? Man ... they are the only one taking risk !!! Nintendo always come with a new controler to shake things up each GEN !!! Sony and MS rely on the same controler for the last 4 gen ... talk about risk !!! Sony and MS use the same controler just like PC use Keyboard/mouse every time ! No Wonder many PC games started to come to consol. Nintendo at least try to do something new and exciting !

And for everyone saying they should go 3rd party for other consol ... it would kill them for good. Why ? After 3 Mario platformer games with the same Dualshock controler with the same bouton scheme it will become very very very very boring. Pretty much like every other IP right now ... they release too many Assassin's Creed in a short window and it became very boring and shitty fast because nothing change, same with God Of War ... 3 is ok but after that no it is the same !!!

At least Nintendo has the good judgement to release one of their IP per gen and not flood a gen with too many sequel that dilute their product like too many other developper. There, Nintendo doesn't take any risk ? Ha

The controller wasn't a risk. Nintendo saw the rise of phones and tablet games and decided to adapt that technology to consoles. We're all familar with touch interfaces, they weren't exactly bringing anything new to the table. It also works no where near as well as it should. I would argue that using a nvidia shield or attaching your phone to a moga controller would be a lot more ideal then using a Wii U controller to play games.

Nintendo decided to copy and paste the Wii formula for this gen. Sell an under powered and under featured console with a gimmicky element.

@JangoWuzHere:

You still wouldn't see Sony nor MS try to incorporate a second screen to their controler or anything new that drastically change how you can intereact with the game. Sure not many games took advantages of the touch screen but it is well made and work.

Nintendo just see that making a very powerful consol never worked for them. N64 was way more powerful than the PSX but it was lacking because it used cartridge. The Gamecube was in the middle between the PS2 and Xbox but still the PS2 dominated in the japanease type of games and Xbox put forth online gaming and PC games to consol. They had full 3rd party support with the Gamecube and it didn't matter in the end.

PS4 and X1 are pretty much a PC now with almost all the same games, without changing the controler, only the graphics are better. There is no risk there.

I remember the moment they showed the N64 wierd controler, the PSX and the Saturn system, all of them with very different controler, with different number of boutons and very different possibilitees. Turn out very few games were on all three system and it was like : ok this one has that feature and you saw developper taking a side and show potential games that used what new technology they had... Now it is pretty much all on graphics because everything else is the same.

Of course he is. Disney will buy Nintendo and make them produce Mickey, Donald, Goofy, ect, games on the mobile until the end of times! :D

Disney buying Nintendo would be a pretty amazing partnership.

You'd think that by now they'd have finally found one that works. At any rate, that is not the kind of risk people want. Mouse and keyboard has stayed the same on PC for 20 years and has only undergone minor changes. Where people want risks is in the games, and Nintendo is very risk-averse. It's the same games every generation with different controllers, where on the other system it's the same controllers with different games.

@Timstuff:

Different games ? not that much no. Different coat of painting but overall it is still the same thing and on top of that they release many iteration in the same gen to milk it

Nintendo will finally get Star Wars Battlefield.

Disney acquiring Nintendo would allow them even greater access into the games publishing world. Disney is a huge company with huge resources. It's really a win/win. If Disney forces Nintendo to stop creating game consoles we'll get a better company in the long-run. Or even if they just have them creating handhelds, everybody wins. Maybe third-party publishers will even flock to the Wii U with Disney at the head of the table.

Uh...

I would buy a Nintendo console in a heartbeat if it had unlimited access to Disney characters to create games with Mario quality.

A Mickey or The Sword in the Stone RPG would be insane

You're contradicting yourself though. You're saying cellphones and consoles are difficult to work and then you say that people are becoming more tech savvy....if people are tech savvy like you say then that implies they can figure out how to use a console/cellphone.

Difficult to set up? On a PS4 or Xbox One you just put in a game, wait for it to install, and play. That's it. On a PC, you have to figure out if the graphics card is compatible or if there's enough memory, making sure the drivers are updated, tweaking the graphics settings to make sure it runs properly, not to mention you got like 100+ buttons on a keyboard + mouse vs 14 buttons on a gamepad. As for space requirements PCs have that too, plus unlike consoles, PCs tend to slow down considerably the more software you have installed. Plus with Wii U, I'd argue that's more complicated than using a PS4 or Xbox One gamepad because on top of the buttons you have the touch screen you have to worry about and having to look down ocassionally to do stuff is just cumbersome and unintuitive.

If anything, I think out of the 3 Nintendo is the one who needs to worry because they're constantly losing developer support because their console is so underpowered and that it will become obsolete within a few years especially as PCs become more advanced and games become more demanding to the point where the Wii U's hardware is so antiquated and inadequate that no one's going to bother porting to it anyway since its based off on the PowerPC architecture, which is more difficult to work with compared to x86 hardware. If Nintendo doesn't step their game up soon, they'll soon find themselves working for Sony/MS soon.

They don't seem to know how to use their profits effectively though. If I were Nintendo, I would've been buying companies left and right like EA or Infinity Ward or Ubisoft. Instead what did they do, spend a crapload of money bringing you a cheap and underpowered tablet that can barely stand up against a real tablet.

@MarkAndExecute: Maybe Steve Elop should hire you.

Nintendo's situation isn't dire at all. They're making fat stacks of cash with the 3DS and the Wii U is improving steadily. They know what their audience wants and they're happy to deliver. They have a ton of cash reserves from the Wii and all the DS's they sold in the past.