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Hands Off the Mario Man!
There has been some talk recently about the death of Nintendo. Let me tell you that homey don't play that.
Nintendo new CEO recently said that the day that they drop out of the hardware game is the day that they go out of business. The Gamecube is doing much better than the Xbox in Europe and Japan but it's real advantage over the Xbox is that Nintendo can manufacture the Gamecube and sell it for a profit due to the much simpler design.
It is estimated that Microsoft take a hundred dollar loss on ever Xbox sold due to a much higher manufacturing cost. It looks like the world wide demand for Xbox is plateauing and orders for new chips from Nvidia has been declining as supply met demand.
Via GameSpot
Friedman, Billings, Ramsey analyst Eric Rothdeutsch said in a report that Microsoft's Xbox sales are a disappointment. Microsoft has sold about 8 million Xbox consoles since the system's introduction in November 2001, and about 1 million units will ship through the end of June, he said.
"Given our belief that Microsoft has over ordered Xbox components and now faces an inventory correction, we expect Nvidia to ship about 5 million chipsets to Microsoft in fiscal year 2004, down from about 8 million, year over year, creating a $150 million hole that needs to be filled," Rothdeutsch said.
I actually own all three but I am not your typical consumer.
But the real ace in Nintendo hand is the Game Boy Advance. It has been selling at a hyper rate (Pokemon) and they have a growing 100% market share for portable games. The only competitors are cell phone gaming and Nokia with the N-Gage but they are currently hypothetical competitors. The Game Boy Advance has actually topped Playstation2 in Japan and is close to doing the same in the US. Big N has billions in the bank and I will bet you that they will be in the business in five years. Microsoft on the other hand is racking up a lot of debt with the Xbox division and is years from breaking even. But I wouldn't write them out also.
We are going to see the Xbox2, Playstation3 and GameCube2 in 2005/2006 (names are not final except PS3). I don't see any of them dropping out until one of the next generation of hardware tanks. But even if a generation of hardware tanks it wouldn't mean the end of the company. Sega has restructured itself after a string on financially unsuccessful game systems and is actually selling more software now that they are a third party publisher.
The way that Nintendo made their billions in the past is by controlling the manufacturing of cartridges. If a third party company wants to make games for the N64 or GB they had to pay Nintendo to manufacture so Nintendo got their cut from the game whether it sold or not. There is no doubt in my mind that Nintendo has evaluated their option of moving into a third party publisher only and they will do that only if their current business model fails. Microsoft does have a big wad of cash in the bank but I do believe that Steve Balmer and Bill Gates will pull the plug on the Xbox team if the Xbox2 fails. That is years away if ever. But then again I am not a PM over in Redmond. The thing about the high tech market place is that you can't really estimate past a handful of years.
Now if you will excuse me I have an appointment to put bullets in the heads of some punk AzZ b3o7chz in Unreal Championship Live.
Jake at February 8, 2003 
Games
Comments
Hey Mario. I got those clothes you wanted. You better tell HIM Mario. DON'T PUSH THE MARIO MAN!! Forget about it Mario.
Posted by: Luigi at February 9, 2003 3:06 AM
Fuggetaboudit. You know whad im sayi'n. Luigi Lets go down an get a gyro and some matza bawlz.
Posted by: pete at February 10, 2003 4:01 PM
In GTA Vice City when you take over location there are these stereotypical New Jersey Mafioso gangsters in Hawwian shirts that hand around and they are always having these conversations with each other and calling everyone Mario. If you run into them sometimes they say. "Don't push the Mario Man"
Posted by: Jake at February 10, 2003 4:08 PM
Shiggy!
Billy has money
Posted by: Chaos at February 16, 2003 5:56 AM
Yeah but I think that Bill and Steve Balmer would pull the plug if the Xbox is loosing money in three years or so. MS does have a lot of money but I doubt they would keep around a project if it was a limitless cash hole for them
Posted by: Jake at February 16, 2003 1:58 PM
I told myself "Mario, take it easy!"
Posted by: Mario at July 26, 2008 8:02 PM
