From the Financial Times, via Polygon:
Following Nintendo’s unveiling of its new console yesterday, the Nintendo Switch, the company suffered from a 7.3 percent drop in its stock overnight.
Shares in the company hit a high of 27,180 yen ($261.60) after the hybrid console’s unveiling yesterday, but are currently sitting at 25,185 yen ($242.40), according to the Financial Times. The drop comes one day after Nintendo received a 4.6 percent increase in shares the night before the Switch was revealed, adding $1 billion to Nintendo’s market value.
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Ouch.Yesterday’s reveal of the Nintendo Switch left plenty of unanswered questions about the new console. We still don’t know if its display is a touchscreen, how powerful the console is, how long the battery will last or what the launch lineup will consist of.
On the one hand, I shouldn't be surprised. I think this is the appropriate response to the amount of "if" with which the whole Switch concept is laden, and Nintendo's apparent continued cluelessness about why people liked their products in the first place, or what the current state of the consumer electronics market says about the viability of things like tablets, mobile gaming devices, underpowered consoles, and the like.
On the other hand... shareholders, man. There's a reason why non-stop hype has become such a prominent feature of the AAA games industry; a lot of people are invested in these companies because their financial advisors told them to buy, rather than because they have a deep love for, or understanding of, the gaming industry.
Nintendo's had a really crappy year. Apart from Pokemon Go, with which they were barely involved, the year has been a non-stop stream of bad news, and the announcement of the Switch has the look of a "hail mary" play. Sometimes that works, and the result can be game-changing; more often, though, it fails, and even Nintendo can only absorb so many more failures. The fact that confusion seems to abound, rather than excitement, may not be a good sign.