Nintendo shares fall 7% on back of unanswered questions over Switch console

midian182

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Unless you were somewhere without TV or Internet access yesterday, you’ll know about Nintendo’s upcoming Switch console. The majority of consumers and critics reacted positively to the three-minute reveal video, but that didn’t prevent skeptical investors causing the company’s share price to drop 7 percent.

Thanks to its innovative motion-sensitive controllers, the original Wii went on to become the fifth best-selling console of all time. But its successor, the Wii U, failed to make a serious impact with gamers. It seems the unanswered questions surrounding the Nintendo Switch is making some shareholders nervous that the machine could become another flop.

Nintendo hasn’t yet released much information about the Switch. We do know that it’s powered by custom Tegra SoC from Nvidia, possibly the Tegra X2, along with a Pascal-based GPU with 256 CUDA cores, meaning it wouldn’t be able to match the older PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in terms of graphical performance.

The Switch’s battery life – often a make or break factor for many devices – is also a mystery, as is the apparent lack of touchscreen capabilities. When asked about the latter issue, Nintendo said: “We have nothing to announce on this topic. We will make additional announcements about the Nintendo Switch hardware later, before the launch of the product."

But the biggest investor concern about the Switch is its price. If it doesn’t launch at a cost equal to or less than the price of other available consoles, it will likely struggle. “They must find a way to release the Switch at US$299 to stand a chance; that’s the threshold. It’s not impossible by offering the device in multiple versions,” game industry consultant Serkan Toto told the Financial Times. He added that Nintendo’s machine may still fail to reach a wide audience: “Who else but diehard Nintendo fans will buy the Switch?”

Nintendo's shares jumped 3.3 percent after it announced the Switch trailer was arriving, before falling more than twice that amount after the video appeared.

When the Nintendo Switch launches next year, it will not only have to compete with the current crop of consoles but also the smartphone games market, which is becoming more popular all the time. We’ll find out if investors were right to be cautious when the Switch arrives in March 2017.

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Screw investors, they literally contribute nothing to anything.

meaning it wouldn’t be able to match the older PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in terms of graphical performance.

this is something I'm tired of hearing. yes, it's less powerful. However, I want people to think for a second, what are they using that extra power for? I find myself often turning off settings in games not only because they are a waste of resources, but because they seem to do nothing for image quality. A lot of times, special effects in games makes the image look WORSE.

We live in this world of "max settings" without really understand what max settings means. Most of the time these max settings are to distract you from what is essentially a crappy game. Very rarely is a game with incredible graphics performance a quality game. Did anyone even play Crysis 3 past it's first play through? How many people actually finished Crysis 3?

I personally think the new zelda game looks AMAZING graphically and that's because they aren't wasting resources on things like lens flare and foliage you that disappears 10 meters in front of you. Or "high quality shadows" that pop in and out of view. Stuff like that ruins immersion for me and is quite literally a waste of resources.
 
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To be honest, considering how small and thin the thing is, I don't expect the battery life to be amazing -enough-make it as viable as a handheld like the many different iterations of the Gameboy/DS or even the PSP. If I were a betting man I'd say the main unit will be sub $300 with a single set of the joycon grip/controllers and that's it. The middle joycon unit (probably half an extra batter and half a grip adjustment) will be extra, additional joycon controller parts will obviously be extra, pro controller will probably be overpriced... there's no guarantee that the dock will be included either honestly considering how hard they're pushing the handheld aspect of the device. Heck, Nintendo might opt for multiple SKUs where each offers a different level of hardware inclusion... *shrug*

Unrelated to the share price dropping, but can you imagine homebrew community turning this thing into a emulator powerhouse monster? I'm thinking like the PSP, but a lot more powerful and bigger screen, and certainly easier to hook up to an HDTV...
 
Screw investors, they literally contribute nothing to anything.
Except the money to make things actually happen.

I'm excited for this one, I think they are going the right way in the multiplayer area, the Wii was extremely fun because of the "party" games it had and the huge array of coop/vs on screen gameplay. If they can match this, oh my!!

Now with all the phone games and stuff I'm thinking, wouldn't it be sweet to have a Nintendo Phone? Think of 3DS with a Phone.

One handheld to rule them all. One handheld to play them. One handheld to bring them all and in the sweet gaming world bind them.
 
Except the money to make things actually happen.

lets be more clear here. These aren't investors as the shares were already sold by Nintendo and are being traded publicly. Shareholders do nothing and should not be catered to. Unless Nintendo needs to sell more of their shares to fund something(which they don't) then share price is entirely irrelevant.
 
Buy on the rumor, sell on the news. You sell on the news because it's expected that others will sell on the news of any company. Then you buy again at a later time when the news has died down.
 
Buy on the rumor, sell on the news. You sell on the news because it's expected that others will sell on the news of any company. Then you buy again at a later time when the news has died down.
Sounds like an easy way to go broke. If you aren't making informed investing decisions to build long term wealth you're wasting your time and mostly likely your money as well. Everyone likes to think they're the ****ing wolf of wall street....
 
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I honestly don't understand this doomsayer, ship-jumping mentality. There is next to nothing known for certain on the Switch's hardware specs, other than it's a Pascal architecture and a custom Tegra.

It won't be as powerful as a PS4 or an Xbone, you say? It's a handheld! The console itself is between the size of a large phone and a tablet. It's very clearly not supposed to compete for the spot under my TV for the games that my PC runs better. It's a tired and essentially flawed argument, claiming that it needs to run against the other consoles, since not only the Nintendo's console was never about running the same yearly AAA publisher games that every other device runs, this one in particular is even less a traditional console, as it is a hybrid handheld.

A Honda Fireblade doesn't have the same BHP as a Bugatti Veyron and nobody complains, because they are two very different things. This is about the closest analogy I can think of. People complaining that a hybrid handeld doesn't have the same power as a dedicated living-room console are missing the point entirely.

It might not have a big enough battery? Nintendo's not releasing specs? The former's conjecture and the latter is par for the course for Nintendo. They never have, to the best of my knowledge, done a lot of leaking nor releasing super early information. Anyone claiming that it's ill omens is reading too much into old company policy.

The way I see it, Nintendo is trying to break ground here, again, by going forward with a hybrid solution unlike anything that's on the market, which has huge potential.
 
To be honest, considering how small and thin the thing is, I don't expect the battery life to be amazing -enough-make it as viable as a handheld like the many different iterations of the Gameboy/DS or even the PSP. If I were a betting man I'd say the main unit will be sub $300 with a single set of the joycon grip/controllers and that's it. The middle joycon unit (probably half an extra batter and half a grip adjustment) will be extra, additional joycon controller parts will obviously be extra, pro controller will probably be overpriced... there's no guarantee that the dock will be included either honestly considering how hard they're pushing the handheld aspect of the device. Heck, Nintendo might opt for multiple SKUs where each offers a different level of hardware inclusion... *shrug*

Unrelated to the share price dropping, but can you imagine homebrew community turning this thing into a emulator powerhouse monster? I'm thinking like the PSP, but a lot more powerful and bigger screen, and certainly easier to hook up to an HDTV...

Tegras aren't Snapdragons; they are very power efficient.
 
Sounds like an easy way to go broke. If you aren't making informed investing decisions to build long term wealth you're wasting your time and mostly likely your money as well. Everyone likes to think they're the ****ing wolf of wall street....
It's a gamble, a scam. A parasite on society. It's very easy for bad people to take the money of unsuspecting people.

Here's a link on what I mentioned in my earlier post http://www.davemanuel.com/investor-dictionary/buy-the-rumor-sell-the-news/
 
It's a gamble, a scam. A parasite on society. It's very easy for bad people to take the money of unsuspecting people.

Here's a link on what I mentioned in my earlier post http://www.davemanuel.com/investor-dictionary/buy-the-rumor-sell-the-news/
ahh, that makes more sense now. Oddly, I've never heard that phrase before but I have noticed the pattern. I usually only buy into things that I understand and do so with the idea that I'll be holding onto it for years, even decades.
 
Screw investors, they literally contribute nothing to anything.

meaning it wouldn’t be able to match the older PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in terms of graphical performance.

this is something I'm tired of hearing. yes, it's less powerful. However, I want people to think for a second, what are they using that extra power for? I find myself often turning off settings in games not only because they are a waste of resources, but because they seem to do nothing for image quality. A lot of times, special effects in games makes the image look WORSE.

We live in this world of "max settings" without really understand what max settings means. Most of the time these max settings are to distract you from what is essentially a crappy game. Very rarely is a game with incredible graphics performance a quality game. Did anyone even play Crysis 3 past it's first play through? How many people actually finished Crysis 3?

I personally think the new zelda game looks AMAZING graphically and that's because they aren't wasting resources on things like lens flare and foliage you that disappears 10 meters in front of you. Or "high quality shadows" that pop in and out of view. Stuff like that ruins immersion for me and is quite literally a waste of resources.

I finished crysis 3 !

I really miss wii party game !
I really dont understand why Nintendo is not just do same thing as wii but better.
Wii never have been succeeded and everyone is waiting the wii succeeder why they dont understand ?
 
I really dont understand why Nintendo is not just do same thing as wii but better.
Wii never have been succeeded and everyone is waiting the wii succeeder why they dont understand ?

They did... it's called the Wii U... and it flopped...

What made the Wii so awesome was it's groundbreaking motion-control.... Unless you can make VR cheaply (or find some other technology you can showcase cheaply), there is not much "new" that you can put in a console...

Kudos to Nintendo for at least trying something different... investors always get nervous when something new and unproven is coming out - especially when the company is pinning so much of their future on the success of what is basically a large gamble.

My worry is that the Surface Book, which is kind of what I'm comparing this to, costs a few thousand dollars... makes me think that this won't be able to perform very well.... hope I'm wrong as I LOVE Nintendo and I want to play a new Mario Kart!
 
Interesting. All comments above seem to be defending Nintendo's announcement that their new device is essentially a new Handheld and not a console?

I mean. Come on Nintendo. If you're going to make a new CONSOLE. At least make it a freaking console and not just a seriously beefed up 3DS? I may have got the wrong end of the stick here. But what has been announced so far is a beefed up 3DS with a docking station? Or am I seriously missing the point?
 
Interesting. All comments above seem to be defending Nintendo's announcement that their new device is essentially a new Handheld and not a console?

I mean. Come on Nintendo. If you're going to make a new CONSOLE. At least make it a freaking console and not just a seriously beefed up 3DS? I may have got the wrong end of the stick here. But what has been announced so far is a beefed up 3DS with a docking station? Or am I seriously missing the point?
Well it's going to run a tegra chip and a Pascal GPU so calling it a "beefed up 3d's" isn't doing it justice. It will most likely be faster than the Wii u and it's portable. I think it's really cool, especially if the price is right.
 
Rumor said the battery last about 3 hours only.
The graphic processing power is about 1 Teraflop according to the spec (a little less than old PS4 and XBox One).
Not quite looking forward to this mobile console.
 
If I were a betting man I'd say the main unit will be sub $300 with a single set of the joycon grip/controllers and that's it. The middle joycon unit (probably half an extra batter and half a grip adjustment) will be extra, additional joycon controller parts will obviously be extra, pro controller will probably be overpriced... there's no guarantee that the dock will be included either honestly considering how hard they're pushing the handheld aspect of the device. Heck, Nintendo might opt for multiple SKUs where each offers a different level of hardware inclusion... *shrug*
Quoting from an Ars Technica Story ( http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/10/what-we-now-know-about-the-nintendo-switch/ ):

Switch comes with two Joy-Con controllers (left and right) to snap onto that LCD screen, according to that Famitsu translation. Nintendo wouldn't comment on whether the TV dock or Joy-Con "grip" handles come in the standard package, which strongly suggests that there could be lower-priced bundles that don't include these "optional" accessories.

Called it lol
 
"We do know that it’s powered by custom Tegra SoC from Nvidia, possibly the Tegra X2, along with a Pascal-based GPU with 256 CUDA cores, meaning it wouldn’t be able to match the older PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in terms of graphical performance."

256 CUDA cores....

That's 1/3 of what's in the 1050. Yeah, this thing isn't even intended for 1080p gaming.
 
Well it's going to run a tegra chip and a Pascal GPU so calling it a "beefed up 3d's" isn't doing it justice. It will most likely be faster than the Wii u and it's portable. I think it's really cool, especially if the price is right.
It's a glorified Nvidia Shield tablet, NOT a console. That's my point. If they sell this as a "Portable Console" I would question the legality of the advertising.
 
It's a glorified Nvidia Shield tablet, NOT a console. That's my point. If they sell this as a "Portable Console" I would question the legality of the advertising.
Is there a legal limit to what constitutes a "console"?
I highly doubt it... It could have the power of an old Palm Pilot and still be legally fine...
 
Is there a legal limit to what constitutes a "console"?
I highly doubt it... It could have the power of an old Palm Pilot and still be legally fine...
I don't care about the power, It's the form factor. It's a Tablet, NOT a Console.

Console is the traditional term for a box under your TV that plays Video Games. A Tablet is a portable screen with a computer attached. This is basically a Surface Pro but has been tuned to play video games instead.
 
It's a glorified Nvidia Shield tablet, NOT a console. That's my point. If they sell this as a "Portable Console" I would question the legality of the advertising.

It is not a glorified shield tablet, nVidia's new pascal based Tegra chips are about 3 times faster than the K1 in the shield tablet. With Nintendo saying that it is going to be a custom Pascal Based Tegra chip it's performance be even better than Current Tagra chips. The shield tablets performance was perfectly acceptable if you aren't a douche about max settings. I have a PC for games that I want high graphics settings, I want the switch for all the games. If it has access to Nintendo's digital games library then I'd love to give Ocarina of Time another go and I never got the chance to play Majora's mask. I also never finished Wind Waker, which was an absolute blast to play. The new Zelda game looks AMAZING too. Quite honestly, I think for what I've seen from gameplay footage of the new nintendo games the graphics look really smooth and good.

I REALLY don't understand all the hate it is getting, it's performance is probably closely going to match how it's priced. I think that the tablet may be sold as is or in a kit with optional accessories like the controller and dock.

I don't care about the power, It's the form factor. It's a Tablet, NOT a Console.

Console is the traditional term for a box under your TV that plays Video Games. A Tablet is a portable screen with a computer attached. This is basically a Surface Pro but has been tuned to play video games instead.
"A video game console is an electronic, digital or computer device that outputs a video signal or visual image to display a video game that one or more people can play."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console

I don't see anything about it needing to be connected to a TV and I can find nothing about the legal term for console.

If you don't like it, don't buy one. No one is forcing you to get this so arguing about it in the first place is pointless.
 
Is there a legal limit to what constitutes a "console"?
I highly doubt it... It could have the power of an old Palm Pilot and still be legally fine...
I don't care about the power, It's the form factor. It's a Tablet, NOT a Console.

Console is the traditional term for a box under your TV that plays Video Games. A Tablet is a portable screen with a computer attached. This is basically a Surface Pro but has been tuned to play video games instead.
That is just the definition used because, until now, all consoles have been that way but there is nothing that legally says a console can't be portable. This thing is portable but it does dock and work on your TV just like a normal console so portable console very much applies. It honestly doesn't matter what you want a console to be and there is a precedent, the phone. Traditionally a phone was hardwired and sat on a wall or a table yet now our phones are mostly wireless and portable but still phones, same type of thinking applies here.
 
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