Sony and Nintendo losing lots of money - whats the impact going to be?

Sony lost $2b last quarter. And Nintendo is expected to announce an annual loss for last year nearing $600m.

Anyone think this will impact next-gen planning and rollouts? I assume the Wii-U is coming either way, but nobody seems to be all that confident it will turn anything around and Nintendo’s handheld bedrock seems to be eroding fast as phones and IOS devices take over. Meanwhile Sony is hemoraging money everywhere but PS3 and insurance, suggesting a big investment in new hardware may be delayed.

3ds & psp 1.5 are both dead on arrival. Psp 1.5 is impressive hardware but not having any games makes it a hard buy. 3DS has no games as well and not likely to get any. About the only thing you see on either system is remakes of remakes of remakes.

I don’t know if i would count on wii-u to save the day. By now a lot of people are tired of the wii and non in house developers seem to be fleeing the ship from game releases. Wii-u just seems like wii + 0.1. At least psp vita seems much improved over psp, but wii-u basically is a wii with a LITTLE better graphics and the most insanely stupid controller ever invented. Straight money grab.

It is easy to take a quick look at the 3ds lineup and be dismissive, but it has more great games than the DS did at the same point in it’s lifespan. Super Mario 3d land is the best mario game since mario 64, Mario Kart 7 is the best iteration since the n64 as well, and the new resident evil is getting a lot of positive reviews.

Thats fine, but that they’ve dropped the price to the equivalent of the DSiXL already means they most likely lost their traditional hardware profit on the thing. And the games don’t seem to be coming at much of a pace either. Regardless, that Nintendo is losing money at this point after all the money they made just a few years ago with the Wii and DS handhelds suggests they are way off the rails at this point.

Phoenix Wright trilogy and Ghost Trick are on or are coming to iOS. Nintendo DS/3DS and Sony PSP are no longer the dominant portable platforms and gaming-only portable devices are a disappearing breed.

Most people have a toaster(or toaster oven), a microwave, and an oven their kitchen. All three of them do the same thing, heat shit up.

That’s a pretty crappy analogy. Yes, they all heat things up but they also have different uses because you don’t always heat things up the same way. The Iphone, on the other hand, has every bit the same capability as the DS does (outside the 3ds, which has not clearly established 3d as a necessity). If my microwave heated things up exactly the same way my oven does you can bet I’d be ditching the one that costs hundreds of dollars more. Just like I ditched that stupid home phone now that my cellphone is just as reliable.

Show me the buttons!

Say what you will, for people who don’t like casual games, i don’t personally believe the game library on iOS compares to PSP, much less NDS.

Gaming consoles are a bit different than the microwave/oven example because they tend to have exclusives. For example, i have a NDS and a psp because each had games i wanted that were exclusive. Obviously if the game library was exactly the same, i would buy the one with the best hardware and be done with it, but that is not and will not be the case probably ever.

Actually, show me the Zelda, Caslevania, and Atlus RPGs.

They’re in decline though.

Aren’t their losses more heavily attributed to the strong yen rather than bad performance per se?

That plays a role, but at least in Sony’s case they had significant actual sales declines in almost every category except the PS3 (which was basically flat) and their insurance business. Nintendo hasn’t officially announced the details of their fiscal year yet, so we’ll have to see what they say but we know that Wii sales have dropped off quite a bit and that the 3ds has struggled (hence the massive price drop already).

just last decade, no one could imagine sega dropping out of hardware to be software-only.

While the PS3 didn’t have a sales decline, revenue took a big hit from the price cut.

Maybe its because Sony and Nintendo don’t charge you to play multiplayer ;P

I thought the 3DS actually picked up pretty well during the holidays, saleswise, it was just that it dragged nintendo down in the beginning of the year and then they sold it at a lost for the rest of it, which didn’t help their profits.

Joking aside, I can’t help but think that Sony would’ve been in a much healthier position if they charged for PSN. If you look at the XBL numbers (which are similar to PSN), Sony are probably leaving around $1 billion in revenues at the table, every freaking year.

Are they? Or would a lot of Playstation owner defect to the Xbox? My friends that bought the PS3 did so because it didn’t charge for online play. I probably would still have gotten a PS3 since the selling point for me at the time was MGS4 which I came to hate so I would’ve gotten one either way. But I doubt I would’ve been able to convince those that did get a PS3 to do so if not for the free online. Personally I don’t play online games enough to justify paying $50/year for the right to play online and many others I know too.

So you are saying that Playstation users, unlike Xbox users, would never pay for online usage? I highly doubt that.

If MS can make $1 billion a year on this, I’m pretty sure Sony could too.