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GC

Beyond Main's Speech

by Mike Revier - January 18, 2000, 5:22 pm EST
Source: Gaming Age

An investment firm pays a visit to Nintendo and looks into their financial standings.

Well the folks at Gaming-Age had this up their stocking. It appears that Morgan Stanley Dean Witter made a visit to Nintendo and was told about Dolphin's expected sales and about the third party developers. It is known that no developers have signed up as of yet, but there are first and second parties for it! Dolphin launch in US first? Here's the scoop...

The investment firm of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter has published a report giving an update after a visit with Nintendo of America. The bottom line on the current state of the business is that it is very good with regard to anything related to Pokemon (no duh!) and Game Boy color. In fact, things could have been even better as Nintendo has been having problems getting the LCD screens for the GBC from Sharp. Nintendo believes they could have sold another 1 million GBC units last year beyond the actual 8 million sold if enough units could have been produced. The company is also having problems securing enough memory chips which has slowed GBC game shipments. Despite these problems, NOA sales were still ahead of plan.

What was interesting is that this report expanded a little more than Nintendo's Peter Main did last week on the Dolphin. In discussions with the Company, MSDW learned that Nintendo of America suggested that 1 to 2 million units of the Dolphin could be shipped in the fiscal year ending March 2001. And that if it did sell 2 million units, it would expect to sell 3.5-4.0 million software units to go along with it. However, NOA was not too concerned if they were to miss this date. They believe that a delay would only give them more cost leverage and more software to have on hand at launch.

On the development front, only first and second party developers have development tools, and as of yet, not a single third party has signed a contract to develop for the Dolphin. But mass production of the tools will not be possible until spring, and after they become available, contracts with third party developers will be signed. Also available when the tools are released to third parties will be the specifications of the Dolphin itself. Given this timetable of development tools release and time necessary for developing games, MSDW estimates that the Dolphin will be released in the Spring of 2001.

Where it is released first still does not seem to be set in stone. NOA stated that the weakness of the N64 in Japan may lead the Company to launch in Japan first, but Nintendo is not sure at this point. In fact, MSDW speculates that the Dolphin actually may be launched in the US first as the gaming environment has changed.

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