Nintendo: Next Console at E3 2004

Nintendo revealed this morning that its next game product will debut at E3 2004, and confirmed its interim loss for the year. All the details inside.

It's was a busy morning for Nintendo news in Japan today, with the company announcing its first ever interim loss of around $27 million - citing poor GameCube sales, and under performing investments because of the rising yen.

However, speaking at a conference today, Senior Managing Director Yoshihiro Mori told journalists that a profit is still forecast for the full year, and quite surprisingly, that Nintendo's next game product will be unveiled at next year's E3 show in May.

Nintendo keeps everyone guessing, including its shareholders

Talk surrounding this enigmatic new product started in August when NCL President Satoru Iwata said it would release an "innovative" new games product. And back at this year's E3 in May, he also stated that Nintendo would be "first" this time. He said: "We are going to do it our way, and we are going to succeed."

It was believed for a very short time in August that the company was referring to the Donkey Konga drum kit, but with this is pretty much old news now and obviously not the case.

About the only additional information known about the new product is what Mori revealed today: "We want to launch the product worldwide simultaneously, but we don't know if that will be possible because of the issue of production capacity."

It is widely believed that this might be Nintendo's last chance to get things right with their hardware. Things will probably remain quiet until E3 2004; many senior staff at NOA don't even know what the new product is yet.

Some insiders are pointing to this new machine being positioned as a 'toy product' and priced competitively, so as not to compete directly with other game hardware on the market now and from 2005. But Nintendo hasn't stated whether the machine is a console, a handheld, or something entirely new.

Other speculation points to an evolution of the iQue product Nintendo is releasing in China, which downloads game content onto the flash memory of a TV-game set.

Will Nintendo deliver something as revolutionary as the Family Computer, or merely a new idea that bombs before it's released like the Virtual Boy? For the sake of Nintendo fans everywhere, we hope its the former. Only time will tell.

Adam Doree
Director, Kikizo.com