News
DSi Announcement Causes Stock Drop For Nintendo
The "Third Pillar" Looking Weak
It seems like gamers everywhere were thrilled with all of Nintendo's announcements yesterday. Between the reveal of a new Punch-Out!!!, a storage solution for the Wii, Club Nintendo coming to America, and, of course, the redesigned DSi, pretty much everyone who owns or wants to own a Nintendo console has something to look forward to. But you'd never know it from the reaction of the stock market.
Investors were not impressed with Nintendo's showing, and the company's stock fell 8.7% as a result. Speaking with Bloomberg, financial analyst, Yoku Ihara explained the drop, stating that "Nintendo's announcement on the DS didn't exceed investors' expectations."
Despite continued sales success, Nintendo has seen its stock drop by over 40% since this time last year. While some of this is explained by a strengthening Yen and the global market crisis, investor confidence in Japan's gaming juggernaut is decidedly down, and yesterday's unveiling did nothing to reassure them. The new DSi goes on sale next month in Japan, but won't arrive until late next year in America, so it will be a while before we know whether or not the market's reaction was an appropriate one.
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Comments
You know what I hate about the economy? That it's all based on fucking speculation. Off-topic, I know, but I had to get it off of my chest.
@J-Man: It's not a bit off topic, and you're absolutely right. A bunch of people sit around in a room and make decisions that affect all of our wallets based on "Uh... maybe this will happen?"
well i do agree with the investors, i did not think the new DS announcement was that special as I didn't see what it really gave me that I wanted or needed. I don't think they did enough with the DSi, they could have tried to really do something different.
A good share of Nintendo's loss of stock has to be directly involved in the Wii. Where have all the Wii's gone? Everyone claims you can buy it in their stores; yet don't produce that fact but for a few minutes every few days. I haven't read anywhere of changing production of the system since almost a year ago when we all read that Nintendo just was making too few for the high demand of the system.
The DSi; however, is a different subject entirely. I agree with the investors' expectations not being met by merely adding a camera, better speakers, and dual touch-screens. Along with the removal of the ability to play GBA titles and use certain peripherals (this goes out to Guitar Hero: On Tour) that were just made for the hand-held device, I don't think Nintendo was clearly thinking.
It probably would have been easier to just recreate the tiny wonder from the ground up. Maybe make it wider, bigger screens, video playback [because they did, in fact, add audio playback] without having to get special game cards that you can use for exportation of videos. Maybe this would have "wowed" their investors a little more than just more of the same image and adding ideas to an already secure system.