(Tokyo) Nintendo shares fell on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Monday, after several media reported in recent days that the Japanese group would not launch its next console before early 2025.
The action of the Japanese video game pioneer dropped 5.83% to 8,356 yen at the close, significantly underperforming the flagship Nikkei index which finished stable. The stock lost up to 8.8% at the start of the session.
According to several media, including VGC and Bloomberg, Nintendo has informed its game publishers that its next console, the highly anticipated successor to its Switch released in 2017, will not be marketed before the first quarter of 2025.
Until now, speculation was rife about a release of this Switch 2 at the end of 2024, to coincide with the end-of-year holiday period, the most important in general for sales of consoles and video games.
This prospect had sent Nintendo stock to new highs last week.
“If the rumors are true, then 2024 will probably be a pretty difficult year for Nintendo,” Serkan Toto, director of the analysis firm Kantan Games, commented on Monday.
Nintendo “will not be able to release blockbusters (this year, Editor’s note) because it will have to reserve them for its next console. So it should limit itself to reissuing old titles, releasing small games or soliciting external studios,” or why not launch a new mobile game, according to this analyst interviewed by AFP.
Nintendo achieves “generally up to 50% of its annual sales” during the holiday quarter, Mr. Toto further underlined.
But on the other hand, the launch of the Switch in 2017 started in March, and that did not prevent it from becoming a “huge success”, he put it into perspective.
For the moment Nintendo remains completely silent on the successor to the Switch as well as on the schedule of its release.