Rumormongering - Apple Could Buy Nintendo?

An anonymous reader writes "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)'"

everyone mod this article down!!!!

[xshader]

i wish you could mod articles down... but you cant... so these kinds of stupid articles reach the front page of slashdot. i am getting more and more tired of stuipd articles showing up on the front page... anyone else agree?

Do what now?

[Rob T Firefly]

Is stuff like this news? If so, I could go blog about how Disney could buy McDonalds, or how Toyota plans on purchasing Vivid Video.

Even if this were a serious issue, which it isn't, I somehow don't see Japan's pride and joy Nintendo selling to an American company for anything, even if it is Apple.

Re:Nintendo selling?

[/dev/niall]

Nintendo is a privately held company. One of the largest in fact.

Actaully, it's been traded on a number of exchanges during it's history, most recently the Tokyo exchange (since 1983).

Company History [nintendo.com]

Re:Nintendo selling?

[joshsisk]

Nintendo is a privately held company. One of the largest in fact.

From the first line of Nintendo's Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org]:

Nintendo (Japanese: , Nintend; NASDAQ: NTDOY, TYO: 7974 ) is a multinational corporation

They are on both the Nasdaq and the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Also, from the corporate information sidebar on the same page:

Nintendo Company, Limited
Nintendo Logo
Type Public (NASDAQ: NTDOY)
Founded November 6, 1889

So, yes... you are incorrect.

Re:Even if they had enough now...

[AuMatar]

Nintendo was already #2 in terms of sales worldwide and #1 in terms of profit last generation. This time they may take #1 in both.

Number 3?

[ivan256]

Excuse me? The DS alone is outselling the 360, and it's on the verge of passing the original Xbox in all time sales. That's just *one* of Nintendo's three consoles on the market right now. In the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube realm they came in third in the US, but pick another stat, any other stat, and they're either #2, or #1. Total console sales? #2, but damned close to #1. Profit (even if you leave out the handhelds)? #2. Not only is Microsoft number three, but they are a distant number three. We're talking astronomical distance.

Was this article written to start flame wars or something?

Re:Stupid.

[badasscat]

In about a year .. when DS Lite and Wii have had a chance to penetrate the market Nintendo may buy Apple ... at least CNET will tell us so.

That would honestly make more sense. Have we all (or at least C-Net) forgotten this [forbes.com]?

Nintendo is for all intents and purposes a privately owned company. If Yamauchi says they're not for sale, they're not for sale. (Yamauchi stepped down only as CEO - he is still majority shareholder.) And we all know him - he's not about to sell out the company for a merger that doesn't help Nintendo in the least.

A hostile takeover of Apple by Nintendo, though, is unlikely but theoretically possible.

Re:Would kill them in the Japanese market

[Dan Ost]

Funny you should say that considering how much better the iPod is doing in
Japan than any of its Japanese-manufactured competitors.

Re:Don't forget the Steve Jobs/Disney&ABC conn

[kilgortrout]

He's the single largest (minority) Disney shareholder after the Pixar buyout not the majority shareholder -- that's a really big difference.

Re:Stupid.

[nanojath]

I certainly hope that Apple doesn't buy nintendo (even if they could )

Yeah, there's a real question. Apple's apparently worth around 72 billion [macdailynews.com], Nintendo I had a bit harder time finding a figure (and wildly disparate "guesses" online - from 6 to 30 billion). I use the data in this [gamespot.com] article to guesstimate around 14 billion. Notable from that article is that as of a year ago Nintendo was the opposite of courting takeover. Suffice to say, Apple could probably afford it. It would not be a trivial expenditure. Nintendo would likely resist it. Whether Apple could actually manage a hostile takeover is questionable. It sounds like blue sky bunkum to me. (But guaranteed to generate just this sort of chatter, hmm...)

Re:Stupid.

[AKAImBatman]

1. That's an urban legend [actsofgord.com].

2. Nintendo has NEVER sold below cost. They make a profit [nintendoinsider.com] on each unit sold.

3. The reason why Microsoft had to sell the XBox at a loss was because they put PC Hardware into a game console. Which made it a lot more expensive than the Nintendo and Sony counterparts.

Re:Stupid.

[infidel13]

Right. While some of the more PC-based consoles were too expensive to compete at the price it took to make them, pure gaming devices tend to skimp on things necessary for normal computers but not gaming per se. For example, the Cell processor of the PS3 is a >3 GHz task division processor (PPE) and eight SPEs - similar devices - all on some sort of ring architecture. This is optimized for single-precision calculations, which are the majority of calculations used in games for the console and results in something like 16 teraflops according to some estimates. However, according to Sony, (sorry, no link here) the performance of the Cell drops by orders of magnitude when it does double-precision, to somewhat below the level of a typical PC processor. Gaming consoles are for games and they don't do other things well.

Re:Stupid.

[KDR_11k]

I think the biggest hurdle to a Nintendo buyout is still Yamauchi owning the majority of the shares.

Re:Stupid.

[joshsisk]

but Nintendo has gone to the "Mario" well a bit too much lately and the poor sales of the cube shows it.

Check the Japanese [the-magicbox.com] sales [joystiq.com] charts [joystiq.com]. In the last two weeks, New Mario Brothers for the DS has sold ~1,000,000, one of the (if not THE) fastest selling games ever. The demand for (good) games with Nintendo characters is there. Look at the Best Buy [gamespot.com] and Amazon.com [amazon.com] US sales ranks for some more evidence... (NMB is currently the top selling console game on Amazon.com, and #2 at Best Buy).

Mario's (and other Nintendo properties) over- or under- exposure isn't what hurt the gamecube. The console is neck and neck with the Xbox 1 for global sales (it vastly outsells it in Japan), and that is primarily based on Nintendo 1st party games (Mario, Zelda, etc). What hurt the cube was a lack of any games BUT the Nintendo games (with a few exceptions like RE4. People that love Nintendo games bought the cube. But to compete with the PS2, they needed people who like GTA, Tekken, Elder Scrolls, etc... That's where they failed with the cube.

As far as them exiting the hardware business, they have already stated they will not do that. And why would they? They came out of the last generation with tons of profits - both on the cube and the GBA. Again, the Cube is worldwide neck and neck with the Xbox - and they made a profit on every console sold, unlike MS. If they only do just as well this time, they will still be making profit (and it looks like they might do a lot better than last time).

Right now, they consistantly dominate Japanese sales charts with the DS and DS games - DS games regularly occupy 50% or more of the games charts, and the DS outsells every other console or handheld handily. This is giving them a massive war chest, not to mention a lot of fans of the DS who may be easy to sway over to the Wii... On the flip side, if the weird controller scheme is bad, it will hurt them. And if they don't get 3rd party games, that will hurt them too.

Either way, though, Nintendo isn't going anywhere.

Re:Even if they had enough now...

[Omkar]

http://nintendoinsider.com/site/EEEZuAypVuTuOJPzyb .php [nintendoinsider.com]

Sony has higher revenues, but Nintendo has much better margins. This is what I found after a quick Google - I know I've seen similar figures for just the home console market somewhere.