I am in the final stages of editing a report on game publishers for Miller Freeman's Game Group , and Nintendo just happens to be my pick as the best game publisher in the world. The company is solid as a rock, and I believe that even if they don't achieve the market share that Sony has in the console arena, Nintendo is much better positioned for profitability and growth in the next three years. The only other consistent, blue chip game publisher around is Electronic Arts , but although it dwarfs its counterparts in the US, it is a much smaller enterprise than Nintendo.

For their fiscal years, ending March 1999, Sony delivered $6,534 million in revenues, and operating profit was $1,137 million (17.4%); Electronic Arts delivered revenues of $1,221 million, and an operating income of $149 million dollars (12.2%); Nintendo's results were revenues of $4,730 million and operating income of $1,340 million (28.3%).

I have to also admit to being more than impressed by the Nintendo marketing machine. The easiest teams to work with in the game industry, well informed, and ready to give you exactly what you need. You want to know the real reason some game publishers do better than others? It's all in the marketing, and most US based subsidiaries of Japanese game companies would do well to emulate Nintendo in this regard. If you are interested, you can get more information on the report at Smokezine , as well as the MFI Game Group site, under the heading Research.

While I am still on the subject, another reason why I bring Nintendo up is that recently a Japanese analyst firm gave me its take on Nintendo's next generation platform, and it was more bullish on Nintendo's strategy than Sony's. Considering the obeisance of the US and European gaming press to any news of PlayStation2, it's refreshing to have some contrary opinions. Unfortunately, I can't share the details of the report with you here, but I can say this, there are people who believe that Nintendo's Dolphin is more than capable of matching Sony's PlayStation2 in technical terms. This includes raw performance, and graphics capability. Additionally, Nintendo has the advantage of a stronger semiconductor manufacturing partner in the shape of IBM. With Matsushita planning to offer Dolphin compatible home entertainment products, Nintendo could have a better strategy than Sony's eggs-in-one-basket approach. I haven't even touched on the subject of handheld games, and Nintendo's Game Boy. I think the subject deserves a column all to itself, and I will get to it in the future.