NINTENDO ‘DS’ PORTABLE DRAWS MIXED RESPONSE
Initial response to Nintendo’s plan to ship a dual-screened portable game system later this year (CED Jan 22 p2) appeared to be mixed. Although 3rd-party game publishers we polled appeared to be intrigued by the new device, code-named “Nintendo DS,” it was too early to say how many of them actually would make games designed for the system. It wasn’t even clear Thurs. whether the new system would be cartridge-based like the current Game Boy Advance (GBA) or optical disc-based like Sony Computer Entertainment’s upcoming PSP, that company’s first handheld game system.
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With only sketchy details available about the system, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter -- who has been among the more bullish analysts on Nintendo’s front-lit GBA SP -- said it was “tough to call” how successful the new portable system would be for Nintendo. For one thing, he said, “I don’t appreciate the significance of 2 screens” and it “sounds confusing to me” at this point.
But Namco Hometek COO/CFO Robert Ennis said the DS “looks interesting” and the dual-screen functionality appeared to “hold a lot of promise.” He said it seemed that Nintendo would be targeting “a more mature audience” with the unit than its current GBA -- a move designed to compete more closely with Sony’s PSP, expected to ship at about the same time in the fall.
Although Nintendo and Sony have yet to announce prices for their upcoming handheld devices, Ennis suggested that the “price points are definitely going to limit [the] initial installed base” for each of them. But he said that was a factor that Namco was familiar with from the home console arena.
Electronic Arts (EA) spokesman Jeff Brown said “EA has had some preliminary discussions with [Nintendo] and the concept sounds interesting.” He said Nintendo, after all, had “an outstanding track record on handhelds” but “we haven’t seen enough technical information to make a decision on development” for the new system.
Nintendo, meanwhile, said it was happy how well its GBA and GameCube fared in Dec. and overall 2003. Referring to NPD Funworld’s data released earlier this week, Nintendo of America (NOA) said: (1) GBA was the #1-selling game system in 2003 “with 8.1 million sold” in the U.S. (2) GameCube was the “fastest- growing system… with a 40% unit sales increase over 2002 (compared to a 25% decline for Sony’s PlayStation 2 and flat sales for Microsoft’s Xbox).” (Shortages of GameCube supply at retail during the holiday season had been reported but NOA had no comment Thurs.) (3) Software titles for GameCube also were the “fastest-growing” with “a 77% unit sales increase over 2002.” (4) “Four of the year’s top 7 sellers played only on Nintendo” platforms (Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire for GBA, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Mario Kart: Double Dash for GameCube). (5) Nintendo was the game company with the most sales growth as “corporate retail revenues increased 16% over 2002.” NOA also announced it had achieved another milestone, saying the “20 millionth” GBA system had been sold in America.
NPD data had indicated that only 300,000 of the 2.26 million GBA hardware units sold in the U.S. in Dec. were the standard GBA as the front-lit GBA SP continued to drive sales. An analyst said NPD data showed that combined unit sales for GBA, GameCube, PS2 and Xbox hardware were about flat in 2003 vs. 2002, with GBA increasing 1.1 million and GameCube 1 million, with PS2 down 2.1 million and Xbox flat.
In other Nintendo news, a group of programmers looking to expand Linux software into the videogame console arena released a program designed to be a first step toward running the free software system on GameCube. The GameCube Linux Project made the program available for downloading online at www.gc-linux.org.