GameCube gets it right as Merrill Lynch back the company

Lynch likes Nintendo - a lot!

Posted by Staff
GameCube gets it right as Merrill Lynch back the company
News has emerged that Nintendo will make a loss on each GameCube sold to the tune of 2350 Yen. This sounds a lot but is actually only £14 a tiny amount by today’s loss-leading console standards.

As a result of this, investment firm Merrill Lynch has changed Nintendo’s rating for stock increase from accumulate to buy, effectively telling investors that Nintendo is on steady ground.

The company has also raised its expectations for success of Nintendo hardware and software at retail level, increasing its estimates for sales across the board. From an opening estimate for GameCube sales starting at a pathetic one million units on a global basis, the revised retail shift of the GameCube now stands at 10.3 million in the financial year of launch.

Software shift revision has also been adjusted to 10.5 million games across the world in the first year of the console going on sale. It is expected that around three million GameCube units will reach European shores, four million will go to the States and the remaining units will stay in Japan. These figures mean that if you want one badly enough, you will be able to get a GameCube wherever you live. Yippee!

The revisions made by Merrill Lynch are the result of a strong showing at E3 and the consolidation of the console’s manufacture and shipping procedures. It has nothing to do with media the GameCube uses, as some sites have reported. There is no mention of media in the Lynch report, and the suggestion that an announcement made over a year ago would make such a dramatic difference at this stage is ridiculous and simply made up.

“We are pleased that the GameCube is gathering pace,” a Nintendo spokesman said today. “The machine had its doubters when it was first unveiled with many saying that it would not be powerful enough to compete. The GameCube answered all these questions and more at E3 where it easily outshone all other hardware on show. We have always been confident that we can deliver exactly what gamers want and it is refreshing to see that everyone else is starting to realise this too. The right machine at the right price with the right games.”

And he has a point. The GameCube is the right machine. There is nothing wrong with it at all. Priced at $199 in the States, the UK may even see it debut at less than £199, due to the excellent rate at which Sterling stands against the Yen. The games that that have been shown exceeded expectations and the titles promised look even better.

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