My biggest takeaway from Nintendo’s investors meeting yesterday wasn’t its sales numbers or the delay of its mobile game debut. And it wasn’t the first details about the new unified account system, My Nintendo. The most meaningful, and risky, piece of information came when President Tatsumi Kimishima was asked about the long term prospects of Nintendo’s partnership with DeNA and its expectations in the mobile market.
From the Wall Street Journal:
The five smartphone apps won’t soon comprise half of sales, Mr. Kimishima says. Nintendo’s goal is to use smart devices to increase the value of its IP, which will help sales of both software and hardware, he says.
Many see Nintendo’s entry into the mobile space as its most promising current endeavor. Since its announced partnership with DeNA and the early discussion of its mobile plans, investor confidence and stock values have been at their highest in recent years. Yet here we have Kimishima unapologetically downplaying the impact that mobile development will have on Nintendo’s overall operations. He reiterates that Nintendo sees mobile games as a vehicle to point consumers toward their dedicated gaming hardware. It’s the exact response I would expect to hear from the late Satoru Iwata, and as a gamer, that makes me as excited as ever for Nintendo’s future.
Needless to say, investors don’t exactly share this enthusiasm. This console-focused sentiment, and the delay of Nintendo’s first mobile project into next year, were followed almost immediately by a 7.5% drop in stock value. In the short term, investors perhaps worry that new, dedicated hardware simply cannot rebound from the dismal performance of the Wii U and the slowing sales of 3DS. They would probably prefer that Nintendo embraced mobile as a proper home for its incredibly valuable IP. Hopefully the reveal and launch of the NX, in the long term, will prove them wrong.
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Written by Brittin Shauers
Brittin literally grew up with Link, Mario and Samus. These three characters and their worlds collectively capture everything that he loves about video games.
