Nintendo’s Secret Stash of Money

Holy crap, that’s a lot of money. There’s an urban legend in the games industry that Nintendo has this secret stash of money that they pull from in case something happens and they find themselves in financial trouble. I personally never believed that, since they’ve always been a success. Even during the ‘dark days’ of the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube, the company still managed to make money from every system sold, plus their first-party titles.

Now, with the success of, what I call, the ‘generation of experimentation’, I think that Nintendo has so much money that they might as well make a ‘secret stash of cash’ since they can’t possibly be spending all of it. I’m glad to see more third-party developers opening up, specifically with the DS. Square Enix’s The World Ends With You has been getting rave reviews, and there’s mounting anticipation for Activision’s Guitar Hero: On Tour.

The Wii is still lagging, but I believe things will get better. I just listened to the EGM Live podcast, and they had nothing but good things to say about a new third-party skiing game using the WiiFit balance board. And there’s no denying the power of Nintendo’s big franchises like Super Smash Bros. (2 million in sales so far!), Mario, and Pokemon.

So, congrats, Nintendo. Maybe you can use all this money to make an HD system next generation.

clipped from www.gamespot.com The company has reported that net sales for the year ending March 31, 2008, were �1.672 trillion ($16.2 billion), up 73 percent on the previous year. This resulted in a net income (or profit) of �257 billion ($2.5 billion) for its 2008 fiscal year ended March 31, up 47 percent on the previous year. Both hardware and software have served up results that are bound to please Nintendo’s accountants. The Wii console sold 18.61 million units worldwide during the last fiscal year, which amounts to 24.5 million units since its release. In its forecasts for April 2008 to March 2009, Nintendo says it will sell 25 million further Wii consoles worldwide. Wii software sales were bolstered by the success of Wii Fit in Japan, where the fitness training programme shifted 1.85 million copies. Super Smash Bros. Brawl sold 4.85 million units in the US and Japan, with Super Mario Galaxy and Mario Party 8 also highlighted as major successes.