Silly season story, Apple to buy Nintendo

[Applefiend]

"CNET wonders if 'Apple is about to frag the gaming community with a revelation that could shake Microsoft to its core: Apple will buy Nintendo. What could be more quintessentially left-field Apple behaviour than buying out the U.S.'s number three games console manufacturer?' The article goes on to compare the companies, saying 'both have followings whose brand dedication verges on the religiously devout' and design styles that are so similar that 'the Nintendo DS Lite practically looks like Jonathan Ive built it.' The writer says an Apple and Nintendo merger will 'penetrate the mainstream consumer market with Macintosh computers'. The possible outcome of a merger would be a console based around the Mac Mini. As for whether Apple have the cash to pull it off: 'Cisco was rumoured to be looking at a purchase of Nintendo earlier in the year, so the idea of Nintendo being bought is not outlandish in itself. Apple's market cap is $51.7bn (Nintendo's is $23.1bn)'"

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/digitalmusic/0,39029432,49276362,00.htm

I like this picture :)

http://www.cnet.co.uk/i/c/blg/cat/digitalmusic/mario_apple.jpg

[Coded-Dude]

Cisco

Cysco - is a food supplier for restaurants....

[P.B.]

wait...is this simply speculation based mainly on...the looks of nintendos new machines?

[Phoenix]

So... these people know nothing?

[HolyPaladin]

Thank God I didn't spell it "Sysco", as I originally planned :) But it's sad to see people treating Nintendo as if it's going to go out of business. Last time I checked Nintendo's stocks were on the rise. I think with the Wii, Nintendo *should* do better than they did with N64, at least I hope they do.

Neither Nintendo nor any Nintendo fan should have reason to fear for the company. For one thing, enthusiasm about Wii has been tremendous following E3, and coupling that enthusiasm with the $250-or-less price (I'm still expect $200), and Wii should do pretty well for itself. But further, Nintendo is a business, and one that's been profitable and looks to continue being more lucrative than the competion in the years ahead.

June 7, 2006 - A typical notion for the videogame industry is that of fairly substantial financial losses during the introductory phase of a new console with the expectation that costs will decline as component prices drop and production efficiency increases. However, in a press conference in Tokyo yesterday, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata stated that the Wii would buck this trend and have fairly minimal losses.

Iwata called the notion that the introduction of a new gaming console necessarily leading to significant losses in its initial stages "strange." Iwata went on to state that Nintendo "can't promise we [the company] won't even have a one yen loss, but we are not expecting an enormous loss."

By way of comparison, Sony told investors and analysts to expect that the introduction of the PlayStation 3 would lead to an estimated $884 million loss for the games division in the upcoming fiscal year while Microsoft has admitted that the amount spent on the Xbox 360 was higher than anticipated.

With the Wii's North American launch price to be less than $250, the company expects consoles sales of around 6 million units and software sales of about 17 million units by March 2007.

There should be plenty of Wiis available early on, too, as both Wii and PS3 are supposed to ship four million units by the close of 2006, and six million by March of 2007. (http://wii.ign.com/articles/711/711660p1.html) As affordable as the Wii will be and as appealing as it seems to be, they shouldn't have difficulty moving these things, so Wii should be doing great during its first few months.

The Nintendo-is-doomed notions have been around for years, though. During the N64 lifecycle, Nintendo was doomed and it was "game over" for them. Then when GameCube was on the horizon, it was going to be Nintendo's last chance or it's the end of Nintendo. Then during GameCube's lifecycle, we still got more doom and gloom and now Wii is Nintendo's last chance.

Bah. Nonsense. Nintendo isn't an athlete or a sports team, but a business, whose goal isn't to "win" first place but to make money and they've been doing that, and so long as they continue doing that they'll keep on cranking out more generations of hardware and games to play on them.

[Vishus]

Who the hell gets bought on purpose when they're doing awesome anyways?

[Applefiend]

These stories are great, some guy at a desk writes a speculation piece based on nothing.

They're speculating on a job advert where Apple want guys with a game development background for their iTunes division. So everyone's thinking the iPods are going to do downloadable games. Instant 40 million user base... Well.. Not really. Don't imagine an iPod shuffle game would be that good. :) But a large user base.

There's more speculation that the new video ipods have touch screens. Brain training on iPod anyone? Nintendo have made touch screen gaming viable and cool now.

So now Apple are buying Nintendo..... right....

[Eidorian]

Thank God I didn't spell it "Sysco", as I originally planned :) But it's sad to see people treating Nintendo as if it's going to go out of business. Last time I checked Nintendo's stocks were on the rise. I think with the Wii, Nintendo *should* do better than they did with N64, at least I hope they do.It is "Sysco" for the food supplier company.

[koten]

Nintendo has been doomed for years according to everyone, but if E3 means anything, Nintendo is going to be increadible this gen.

Oh, and if Microsoft couldn't buy Nintendo, how the hell could Apple?

[Flamin Scotsman]

err
iv been a nintendo fan since the nes era
if apple buy nintendo
i will not buy the wii
apple is a twat

[Viper]

Not happening.

US companies do not buy japanese companies for the sole reason that its pretty much against Japanese law.

Secondly, Nintendo is a rightly proud company and one of the richest in Japan. They have a family history that stretches over 100 years. I could go on and on but there is far more against a sell than for a sell.

If anything, a partnership could be formed but not actual stock swappage will be going on.