Wow that certainly is pricy. Does anyone know if those brokers like Interactive Brokers who claim to trade like everything allow online trading of international stocks with commissions closer to US stocks?
Hey, Twitch. Yes I'm a U.S. investor with Schwab. You have to call their international desk 1-800-992-4685 and they'll make that trade on the Tokyo exchange and you'll get the actual shares, not ADR shares. You can even buy Ubisoft. It costs like $100 bucks and the phone call takes a good 10 minutes, so it's not easy to trade it. I suggest the buy and hold strategy with these video game stocks anyway, as they're getting into movies next (both Capcom and Ubi). Thank God for that as movie plots have stunk lately. Enjoy.
Nice call, Aliens! Ubisoft has been killed since you mentioned it. Is that a dip you would buy? Looks more like a dive than a dip. If so, thanks for taking it down for us. What about Capcom? They're even cheaper than Ubi. P/S of like 1.6 I think and there are always rumors of Microsoft buying them out. Would be a great way to enter the Japanese market.
I agree with Zukaus on NTDOY. I would add that they have a stunning $8 Billion in cash and no long term debt. Another stock I would buy on dips is Ubisoft (UBSFF). On a price to sales basis, the stock is dirt cheap. ATVI trades at a P/S of 4.23, while UBI trades at 2 times sales. I'll take Ubisoft's lineup of games vs. Activision's any day. Furthermore, UBI has a goal of doubling their revenues by 2010 and their management has typically under-promised and over-delivered. With Tom Clancy's End War and Assassin's Creed being added to an already potent lineup for FY08, they seem to be on track. UBI has strong insider ownership with the CEO's family owning 15%, EA owning 18% and Fidelity owning another 11% (outstanding shares are only 45 million shares). Buy the dips on Ubisoft and NTDOY. Disclosure: I've been long both for a while.
I wouldn't say lower VC sales = people deciding not to buy lesser [quality] games. There are many factors at play. As I said one is that the earlier adopters of the Wii were more likely to buy more VC titles. I still think price is a factor, the prices are quite larege. Also you don't get a hard copy of the game & VC titles are majority-wise more expensive than the real games.
I still think even if sales are lower, that Nintendo is better off not putting all the VC games on at once and sticking to their current rollout. Noone will buy the lesser games if all the classics are available instead. And if I was Nintendo I would not spend the money on advertising VC games. Anyone who owns a Wii & internet access is going to see the VC games as they become available. And they already give out press releases which are carried by nearly all game sites. The cost of advertising VC titles would not be worth it imo. Likewise, XBLA & PSNdlc games are not advertised. Use the advertising money for the games that cost $50-$60.
Earlier, I would have agreed with your statement about having people buy lesser games...but if those VC sales numbers are correct, that effect seems to have worn off.
I would disagree about the price however...yes, it is higher than it likely could be, but for a Wii owner that doesn't own the older consoles still (thankfully by girlfriend rocks and has them all), picking up a NES game for $5 is a lot cheaper/easier than tracking down a system, game, etc.
If nothing else, they REALLY need to advertise the thing. If I wasn't an avid reader of GoNintendo, I wouldn't see when most of the titles are put on. They can't do a weekly Wii Message bulletin? Or TV/Net ads? Also, the interface (for finding, buying) sucks quite frankly. There's no reason why it can't be faster and easier to search through.
@Laoldar. I think Nintendo not having all of their titles up at once, for instance all of their NES titles, is actually a smart move. By spacing them out, they will get people to more likely buy games they wouldn't have if they had the choice of all the games at once. For instance a person will buy lesser games because the better games are not available yet. I see slowing VC sales as a result of 2 things, 1) the earlier adopters were the more hardcore type of gamers who would purchase VC titles, and 2) the price of VC is too high.
It's interesting that Joystiq noted how Virtual Console sales appear to be slower now (1.5 million in first 2 months, 1.8 million in last 3). However, one can hope that Nintendo is simply waiting for some future development before they really push the service (some sort of update to allow for more space, a larger install base, etc). Quite frankly, there's really no reason not to have every major NES title on there right now. It's a cool little service that works seamlessly with the Wii (actually better than its Gamecube compatibility...what, I can't go back to the menu from a game?) and there's clearly demand for classic games.
Nintendo should get some support for USB drives to be used as accessible space and start advertising the VC. It's a service that a lot of young adults were excited for and could become a very nice (and insanely profitable) revenue stream for them and 3rd party companies.
Then again, much like several other events for them in recent years, I think they may have simply been caught offguard by their own popularity and didn't expect the VC to be a big enough draw to bother planning for more than a handful of titles each month.
I think that a lot of analysts only looked at the previous two home console generations and ignored Nintendo and are going to slowly reverse their positions.
Something important to consider about the success of the DS and Wii is that it'll mean incredible software growth for Nintendo. The top titles on any Nintendo console are inevitably first-party (for the most part) and they're cashing in on that in a big way. While DS software sales have set their stock to a new high, I think it'll continue to climb as their big first-party Wii titles start to hit shelves. The releases of Super Paper Mario, Mario Party 8, Smash Bros Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3 and other smaller games will tip their 2007 profits over 2006 easily. Hopefully their management will remember the lessons of the N64/Gamecube eras and use this regained influence to better their relationships with 3rd party developers.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Nintendo stock, but sure wished I did ;) (just finished undergrad).
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