Cisco to buy Nintendo?

[d_saum]

Just came across THIS (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/31/1527234&from=rss) and said WTF??? Anywho, I gotta run but what are your thoughts???

Peace!

[kwajo.com]

I'm not sure I'd like Nintendo to be bought by Cisco. Sure that would ensure financial sucurity, but at what price?

If Cisco wants to by a console maker, they should buy Sega and get them to plunge back into Consoles. :cool: Dreamcast 2 Here we come!

[2nyRiggz]

^ That would be nice but Sega already released all of their big guns to the other consoles....they would have to start from the bottom but it would be nice.


Bless

[clayj]

I can't see Nintendo, one of Japan's oldest companies, allowing itself to be bought by a bunch of upstart gaijin.

TiVo seems more likely a purchase, but with so many cable boxes and satellite receivers now coming equipped with DVRs, it seems to me that TiVo is being increasingly marginalized/commoditized and I can't see it being a worthwhile purchase for an outsider like Cisco... unless they were going to start allowing TiVos to exchange TV shows (which would CERTAINLY boost network traffic).

[Dagless]

Unlikely. Firstly Nintendo is in no financial worry. ok thats all I have! isn't that all that's needed?

It would seem more likely they'd buy out Xbox. MS possibly give up with the financial loss it is (was?) and let someone else take over? That and they're both American companies like.

[danny_w]

Tivo might make some sense, since Cisco already bought Scientific-Atlanta, the cable-box and DVR maker; this way they could have entries into both the cable and satellite industries. But I also find it highly unlikely that Nintendo would sell out to an American company, or any other company for that matter. It's not like they need the money.

[GFLPraxis]

Unlikely. This article is correct. http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=11723

Nintendo is still HIGHLY profitable, has 5 billion in the bank (Apple is 7 or 8 IIRC) and at current rates will make a billion a year in profits ($801 million in 9 months in profits). They'd have absolutely no reason to sell.

[rockthecasbah]

Unlikely. This article is correct. http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=11723

Nintendo is still HIGHLY profitable, has 5 billion in the bank (Apple is 7 or 8 IIRC) and at current rates will make a billion a year in profits ($801 million in 9 months in profits). They'd have absolutely no reason to sell.
that's true..for now. Nintendo really needs to get developers back with big name titles that drive Sony and Microsoft (stuff not marketed to kids 10 and under basically). Can Nintendo really rely on it's portable market share forever?

[d_saum]

I'm not sure I'd like Nintendo to be bought by Cisco. Sure that would ensure financial sucurity, but at what price?

If Cisco wants to by a console maker, they should buy Sega and get them to plunge back into Consoles. :cool: Dreamcast 2 Here we come!

Now ^THAT^ is a GREAT idea!!!!!!!!!!

Im with you guys! I think Nintendo is fine on its own. My only hope/wish is that Nintendo gets more 3rd party support.

As for the Tivo thing, I dont care either way because Im pretty sure those "Tivo Killer" front row rumors are true. ;)

[markie]

Ahhh, Cisco is horrible and very anti-Mac. Scary, scary stuff.

[GFLPraxis]

that's true..for now. Nintendo really needs to get developers back with big name titles that drive Sony and Microsoft (stuff not marketed to kids 10 and under basically). Can Nintendo really rely on it's portable market share forever?

They already have. Have you been keeping up with the amount of developers with Revolution support? Even EA has said they're making the next James Bond game on Revolution as well. IGN claims Sega is making a Revolution-exclusive Sonic game. Ubisoft has pledged support, as have a number of other major developers.

[DrNeroCF]

that's true..for now. Nintendo really needs to get developers back with big name titles that drive Sony and Microsoft (stuff not marketed to kids 10 and under basically). Can Nintendo really rely on it's portable market share forever?

Do you even play video games? Nintendo doesn't get developers back. They buy 2nd parties like Retro, they make incredible games like Zelda: Twilight Princess internally. They create a freaking studio of all-stars to make Smash Bros. 3. They've been making Mario 128 forever just so it will be PERFECT.

They're Nintendo, they roll around in money for fun, look:

http://img469.imageshack.us/img469/3603/dsprintsmoney2xp.th.jpg (http://img469.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsprintsmoney2xp.jpg)

Nintendo doesn't make games for pre-10 year olds. They make games for EVERYONE. Your girlfriend, your mom, your little sister, your friends, and you. Playstation 2 gets early learning software, Gamecube gets Metroid Prime, Baiten Kaitos 2, Resident Evil 4, Tales of Symphonia, Viewtiful Joe, Geist, Battalion Wars, Eternal Darkness, Rogue Leader...

And yes, Nintendo could easily rely on the portable market forever. You know why? They don't LOSE money making consoles, like the other two companies. Breaking even would be a godsent for Sony and M$ next-gen.

Misinformed mainstream... *sigh*

[d_saum]

is there actually a list of developers who support the Rev? If so, I'd love to see it! :D

[GFLPraxis]

Do you even play video games? Nintendo doesn't get developers back. They buy 2nd parties like Retro, they make incredible games like Zelda: Twilight Princess internally. They create a freaking studio of all-stars to make Smash Bros. 3. They've been making Mario 128 forever just so it will be PERFECT.

They're Nintendo, they roll around in money for fun, look:

http://img469.imageshack.us/img469/3603/dsprintsmoney2xp.th.jpg (http://img469.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsprintsmoney2xp.jpg)

Nintendo doesn't make games for pre-10 year olds. They make games for EVERYONE. Your girlfriend, your mom, your little sister, your friends, and you. Playstation 2 gets early learning software, Gamecube gets Metroid Prime, Baiten Kaitos 2, Resident Evil 4, Tales of Symphonia, Viewtiful Joe, Geist, Battalion Wars, Eternal Darkness, Rogue Leader...

And yes, Nintendo could easily rely on the portable market forever. You know why? They don't LOSE money making consoles, like the other two companies. Breaking even would be a godsent for Sony and M$ next-gen.

Misinformed mainstream... *sigh*

No need to be so hostile. Nintendo actually DOES need to get third parties back. They've already got Square Enix, Ubisoft, and EA making games, Hideo Kojima praising the system and saying that the two systems he wants to make games for most are PC followed by Revolution then the other two consoles, Sega being very nice to Nintendo, etc.

They also license out games to their partners (Square Enix got to do Mario RPG, Namco got to do Star Fox Assault, Sega got to do F-Zero).

[Dagless]

hehe. I love when people don't know whats new. its alright though so much goes on these days. but yea, Nintendo's 3rd party developers are flocking to the Revolution in about the same way as they did with the Super Nintendo. On the other hand developers are dropping support for the PS3 because of its complex coding, these developers just want to make money and the easiest way at the moment is on the Rev. at least thats my guess. but people are leaving PS3 and joining Rev, thats a given.

I do want Sega back however :( the only company to truly rival Nintendo. before all this silly "home entertainment comput... i mean console!" business :(

[d_saum]

developers are dropping support for the PS3 because of its complex coding

Actually, thats not correct anymore. Apparently, it was just propaganda fed by M$ about how hard the PS3 is to develop for. You can read about it if you want:
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=11718

[GFLPraxis]

Actually, thats not correct anymore. Apparently, it was just propaganda fed by M$ about how hard the PS3 is to develop for. You can read about it if you want:
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=11718

As I've always suspected. Thanks.
It's good to know- I keep hearing articles proclaiming developers are dropping PS3 left and right, but I have yet to find one developer who says they are dropping the PS3.

[rockthecasbah]

Do you even play video games? Nintendo doesn't get developers back. They buy 2nd parties like Retro, they make incredible games like Zelda: Twilight Princess internally. They create a freaking studio of all-stars to make Smash Bros. 3. They've been making Mario 128 forever just so it will be PERFECT.

They're Nintendo, they roll around in money for fun, look:

http://img469.imageshack.us/img469/3603/dsprintsmoney2xp.th.jpg (http://img469.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsprintsmoney2xp.jpg)

Nintendo doesn't make games for pre-10 year olds. They make games for EVERYONE. Your girlfriend, your mom, your little sister, your friends, and you. Playstation 2 gets early learning software, Gamecube gets Metroid Prime, Baiten Kaitos 2, Resident Evil 4, Tales of Symphonia, Viewtiful Joe, Geist, Battalion Wars, Eternal Darkness, Rogue Leader...

And yes, Nintendo could easily rely on the portable market forever. You know why? They don't LOSE money making consoles, like the other two companies. Breaking even would be a godsent for Sony and M$ next-gen.

Misinformed mainstream... *sigh*

you act like the gamecube is overflowing with new, great titles. Take a look at any magazine that isn't console specific like gameinformer. Previews upon previews for Playstation and Xbox games but nothing other than 1st party titles for the GC. Nintendo has 1-3 new game reviews (most or all are crap for movies or Nickelodeon, crap games in comparison to RE4, Metroid, etc), whereas the PS2 easily doubles just Nintendo's output. Look in video game stores, GC is outnumbered by far to PS2 and Xbox.

The facts are that the GC is nearly dead at this point for third party support. Nintendo DOES need to get back the support. They can't just buy every studio like Retro. Furthermore, yeah all the developers back the system NOW, but how many will deliver title after title? I will believe it when i see actual TITLES, not just agreements of "woopee, i'll do a publicity stunt of shaking hands to make people think we're interested in putting out tons of games." You have to be living in fantasy land if you think that just releasing the magical Revolution will cure all of Nintendo's third party woes.

[Sharpsk8101]

you act like the gamecube is overflowing with new, great titles. Take a look at any magazine that isn't console specific like gameinformer. Previews upon previews for Playstation and Xbox games but nothing other than 1st party titles for the GC. Nintendo has 1-3 new game reviews (most or all are crap for movies or Nickelodeon, crap games in comparison to RE4, Metroid, etc), whereas the PS2 easily doubles just Nintendo's output. Look in video game stores, GC is outnumbered by far to PS2 and Xbox.

The facts are that the GC is nearly dead at this point for third party support. Nintendo DOES need to get back the support. They can't just buy every studio like Retro. Furthermore, yeah all the developers back the system NOW, but how many will deliver title after title? I will believe it when i see actual TITLES, not just agreements of "woopee, i'll do a publicity stunt of shaking hands to make people think we're interested in putting out tons of games." You have to be living in fantasy land if you think that just releasing the magical Revolution will cure all of Nintendo's third party woes.

First of all, how many of those tons of PS2 games would you actually even think about playing? Sure like every other console it has very good titles, but it also has some that stink more than unwashed farm animals.

Also, in that same Gameinformer you are reading, look at all of the different developers talking about the revolution. A good number of them even said they didn't like the concept at first. They also admitted that once they tried it they fell in love with it and are now backing it.

[DEXTERITY]

well we turned down 30 billion from Microsoft last year, I doubt this is going to happen. No one is even talking about it...

[mac.head.high]

I can't see Nintendo, one of Japan's oldest companies, allowing itself to be bought by a bunch of upstart gaijin.

TiVo seems more likely a purchase, but with so many cable boxes and satellite receivers now coming equipped with DVRs, it seems to me that TiVo is being increasingly marginalized/commoditized and I can't see it being a worthwhile purchase for an outsider like Cisco... unless they were going to start allowing TiVos to exchange TV shows (which would CERTAINLY boost network traffic).


Just to inform you, even though it's off topic, Tivo's can swap media between Tivo's. You use a Program by Tivo called Tivo Desktop Manager or something. It runs on PC (just avbout any windows OS) and Macs up to system 10.2 or 10.3. On Macs it allows the wireless playback of music from your iTunes Library on your TV as long as the song's file format is mp3 and you have your Tivo and computer setup with wireless adaptors. And for the PC it allows the same functionality through iTunes but you can also swap media from one wireless Tivo enable box to another if they are in wifi range of each-other.

I just wanted to point that out since you had made mention of the concept.

[joecool85]

How about they buy Atari? Most of you probably never heard about the 64bit system they had, the jaguar, but it kicked ass. I bet they could come up with a killer new system. (The Jaguar was out before the crappy 32bit PS btw).

[HiRez]

Ahhh, Cisco is horrible and very anti-Mac. Scary, scary stuff.I don't know if they're anti-Mac, exactly. I just don't think they've ever had much reason to pay attention to Macs. Cisco is a commodity-driven company, that natually leads them to focus on other low-cost, commodity items, like mainsteam PCs. But I can't see Cisco owning Nintendo, that is just too bizarre. If anyone would fit with Nintendo, it should be Apple, since their philosophies are so similar (but I don't think they need to own each other either).

[jtalerico]

Ahhh, Cisco is horrible and very anti-Mac. Scary, scary stuff.

Wow what a dumbass comment. Tell me, who is your source? From what i have seen (and yes from that comment you can guess i have been in many Cisco Systems labs), Cisco has ALOT of Mac equipment here in the RTP area. Not sure where you get your info.. But still a very dumb comment. And horrible? LOL, lets just not get into it.

[jtalerico]

I don't know if they're anti-Mac, exactly. I just don't think they've ever had much reason to pay attention to Macs. Cisco is a commodity-driven company, that natually leads them to focus on other low-cost, commodity items, like mainsteam PCs. But I can't see Cisco owning Nintendo, that is just too bizarre. If anyone would fit with Nintendo, it should be Apple, since their philosophies are so similar (but I don't think they need to own each other either).

I agree, Cisco will never even look at Nintendo. This is just some guy who saw that Cisco is possibly perusing the entertainment industry and decided to write up something about who they MIGHT take over. This is purely a Rumor.

[BrianDavid0523]

Anyone, reporter or otherwise, who thinks Nintendo will allow itself to be taken over by an American company has their head in the clouds. Puhleez

[seenew]

As for the quantity of games arguement of Nitendo underperforming Sony and Microsoft... I like to think of it kind of like this: Children like to draw little crayon drawings of their cats and dogs and flowers and trees, and that's okay, there are a ton of those drawings hanging on their mom's refridgerator.
But real artists are painting masterpieces at a far slower rate, spending more time on craftsmanship and overal final quality- and their works are hung on the walls of famous museums throughout the world.

The thing is, Nintendo may lack quantity, but their quality of games (READ: gameplay, originality, replay value) far surpasses the masses of crappy, redone, sequel of a sequel games that are released by the dozens every week to Sony and Microsoft systems.

I have an Xbox and Halo 2. I have a Gamecube with 22 games and a DS with 5 games. I don't own a PS2 or a PSP. I Haven't found a good reason to.



And back on main topic: I read somewhere (can't remember, it might have been an article in EGM) in an interveiew with Miyamoto that he said something like "The moment Nintendo leaves the hardware business is the moment we leave the software business. We won't ever sell out and we will never quit"

There's nothing to worry about.

[myshoeshurt]

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooo......." is how I feel about this.

[Dagless]

As for the quantity of games arguement of Nitendo underperforming Sony and Microsoft... I like to think of it kind of like this: Children like to draw little crayon drawings of their cats and dogs and flowers and trees, and that's okay, there are a ton of those drawings hanging on their mom's refridgerator.
But real artists are painting masterpieces at a far slower rate, spending more time on craftsmanship and overal final quality- and their works are hung on the walls of famous museums throughout the world.

The thing is, Nintendo may lack quantity, but their quality of games (READ: gameplay, originality, replay value) far surpasses the masses of crappy, redone, sequel of a sequel games that are released by the dozens every week to Sony and Microsoft systems.

I have an Xbox and Halo 2. I have a Gamecube with 22 games and a DS with 5 games. I don't own a PS2 or a PSP. I Haven't found a good reason to.



And back on main topic: I read somewhere (can't remember, it might have been an article in EGM) in an interveiew with Miyamoto that he said something like "The moment Nintendo leaves the hardware business is the moment we leave the software business. We won't ever sell out and we will never quit"

There's nothing to worry about.

That is why I've never spent a lot of money on non-Nintendo/Sega machines. infact... both my PS1 and Xbox were xmas presents. I've only bought 1 Xbox game, the others came free and were gifts :D ... I've only given £14.99 to other systems!

That's a good quote too. I feel a little reassured that they wont sell out. after all, they run at their own pace until the chosen technology gets a little better (disc systems, mass online play). ak I'm going to shut up now. I just watched a full quality Twilight Princess trailer so I'm a bit chuffed to be in the N boat right now.