You see this is where Nintendo is different, the top brass are willing to take major cuts so they do not have to fire staff.

If this was sony of microsoft lol emoplyee's would be out on their asses by now =p

I know a lot of smaller dev's cannot help it, but not a lot of people out there these days that would do what they are doing before getting rid of staff.

here's some more detail if any of you are interested
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2014/140129e.pdf

Good, more businesses should follow this example, the business does crap it falls on the directors/managers etc. Take the pay cut and work harder.

Woofels said ...

You see this is where Nintendo is different, the top brass are willing to take major cuts so they do not have to fire staff.

If this was sony of microsoft lol emoplyee's would be out on their asses by now =p

Wow... just so incredibly wrong.

Sony top brass have been taking pay cuts for years now before letting go of employees. The CEO before Kaz Hirai took maybe 2 pay cuts, including other members. One such member was Kaz himself. Even when becoming the CEO of Sony one of the first thing he did was cut his pay along with the rest of the board, all because of the financial situation they were in. He did this nearly 2 years ago.

Nintendo are not 'different' because their actions are pretty much similar to what other similar companies have done in the past.

Nintendo cant afford to lose employees since they just recently brought all their studios to the same premises and having difficulty in developing HD games are in no position to drop members without negatively affecting game development they desperately need right now.

that said, I have no idea about MS.

Supa said ...

here's some more detail if any of you are interested
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2014/140129e.pdf

Interesting.
3DS software saw a rise YoY (which should be obvious).
Hardware, on the other hand, is down. For the full year period of April - Mar, this year will be the lowest they have had for 3 years calculated. So that is bad news.

Digital revenue is up so that is good.

WiiU hardware is down. With 6 extra months for sales, they are going to be about a million down YoY.

They are only expecting to sell 400k from Jan to Mar which implies they dont expect DK to be a hardware mover, and that Mario Kart is definitely only releasing April earliest. Whatever plan they have will probably only take affect in April too.

For same periods covered, WiiU is way below the N64 in terms of shipped units (had about 15 million) and even below the GC (9 million). WiiU expected to be about 6 millon.

So the situation looks to be pretty much on par with expectations. The good thing for Nintendo is software is selling, even if the attach rates for software on the WiiU and 3DS are lower than the GC and DS.


EDIT:

interesting, Nintendo is going to be doubling down on NFC functionality of the gamepad to market the controller better.