In something that will come as absolutely no surprise, the reception to Pokemon GO has been excellent news not just for Nintendo — but its shareholders too.
Image: Supplied
The company’s stock price has soared by a staggering 23.33% at the time of writing to ¥20,065 (~$264) in the last couple of days. It’s the highest Nintendo’s stock has been since August last year, when it hovered above ¥24,000 ($315.88) for a few days.
It’s still well below the glory days of the Wii. But since the app launched on Wednesday Australian time, Nintendo’s stock has put on 36.3% since the close of markets on Tuesday.
For a corporation the size of Nintendo, that’s a staggering increase in value. And it’s only set to climb higher, provided Niantic can sort out the server issues that have delayed the game’s wider international launch.
Nevertheless, it shouldn’t hurt the company’s finances too much. Similarweb has posted figures showing that not only is Pokemon GO now more popular than Tinder, but it’s starting to rival Twitter in terms of daily active users.
Crazy.
Comments
17 responses to “Pokemon GO Has Done Wonders For Nintendo’s Stock”
I’d be selling now. The Pokemon GO thing is a gimmick and will probably last a matter of weeks before the usage tapers off drastically.
I’d hold out a bit longer.
Let other countries join in.
Question is: if it continues to rise and Niantic fix the issues smoothly enough, do you then hold out for the Pokemon Sun/Moon launch as well, given the 3DS install base?
I thinking world wide would hit in a week. Give it maybe another week or two then get out.
The game that once again has proved Nintendo’s main ethos that everybody can, should and be able to engage in playing video games:
Pokemon Go.
The game that sees people who break out with hives whenever they hear anything remotely positive about Nintendo and can’t help themselves but to provide some snide or disparaging comment:
Pokemon Go Fuck Yourself.
I’m not that sold on the game itself – as yet – but I’m also seeing a distinct ‘well actually’ attitude towards it, the way it’s caught attention, and of course Nintendo itself.
It’s Wii all over again. ‘Fuckin casuals’ ‘it’s not a real game’ ‘Nintendo this’ ‘Nintendo that’.
I mean, I’ll gladly accept the jeers of fanboy if I have to explain to people that this is where we want gaming to go – Nintendo has the right of it, and they always have despite some backwards thinking and spectacular failures.
I can also pick out a litany of faults with it myself, but Blind Freddy could see this is designed to cater to un-tapped audiences and engage them with ‘Nintendo’ (whatever that might mean in a year or two’s time).
pulls out windows phone to look for app to join in on the action.
Puts on forlorn face and dives for the surface in the hopes they will have more luck there…
Forlorn face becomes more forlorn as they just found out they were excluded from the fun.
If by that you mean that no one will be playing it this time next week, then yes. It can’t sustain anything like this sense of engagement for long. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a gimmick but it’s a novelty that won’t last long. I had a couple days of real excitement with it but I can already feel my interest dropping precipitously.
I like the idea of gaming reaching a wider audience but things like Pokemon Go should only be the “gateway drug” to “real” games. It’s an interesting concept but let’s be honest, Go is a pretty shallow game. Games need to be getting deeper, not shallower in terms of their complexity so we shouldn’t treat Go as the model for gaming going forward.
That’s a wrong-headed and juvenile train of thought but have it your way.
I suspect a fair number will drop it before too long, sure, but I already know some who have been playing it constantly for months (during the field test), and aren’t likely to stop any time soon.
If you like the idea of location-based gaming, but think PoGo is a little too shallow for you, may I suggest Ingress – there’s a great deal more emergent complexity there, and stronger group-cooperation mechanics. There are pretty sizable communities in most cities, and a lot of players are still engaged after 2-3 years. (just join the Blue team, m’kay? 😉
I would love to jump onboard and buy some shares before NX is properly unveiled but have no idea how to go about buying shares in a japanese company from oz.
Anyone have experience in this sort of thing?
You’re going to have hit the phone-book (you know what I mean) for brokers who deal specially in stocks not readily available to generic Australian Stock Exchange users. After the first (or ‘top’) 200 domestic companies listed on there, there’s a bunch that are able to have shares traded but it’s still a bit of a minefield.
The ATO will probably want to chat to you as well.
It’s going to be interesting to see how this turns out. The idea is not new at all (Anyone remember Barcode Battlers? And of course there’s Ingress.) but like Apple’s marketing strategies, Nintendo has been able to capture people’s attention by using the Pokemon name and then letting word of mouth take it from there.
From here on out though the challenge is going to be both keeping people interested and combating the slew of negative press emerging around the game. (eg. People killing themselves while not paying attention, people preying on others with fake beacons and many places getting annoyed at people coming onto the premises unwanted.)
Fake beacons?
At least some of this is because the government in Japan won a massive victory in their elections over the weekend and today was talking about a new stimulus package to boost their flagging economy – the entire Nikkei is up 4%.
Has there been analysis of the success of the monetisation? Is it actually earning them any money? Go is blessedly free of the “frustration features” many mobile apps use to increase monetisation so I wonder how much of the hype is actually turning into $$$.
its currently the top grossing app on android and I know a lot of people that have spent over $50 in the first few days. The game currently has quite a p2w mentality
Can’t wait for the Official Nintendo Gameboy App.