Shares of Nintendo Co. suffered their worst drop in three months on Tuesday following a grim earnings call in which executives confessed they have completely run out of failed 2014 games to re-release on their upcoming console.
KYOTO, JAPAN — Shares of Nintendo Co. suffered their steepest drop in three months on Tuesday following a grim earnings call in which executives confessed they have completely run out of failed Wii U games to port to their upcoming console.
The Kyoto-based gaming giant revised its hardware and software forecasts drastically downward, acknowledging that the self-sustaining demand cycle of the original Switch was almost entirely dependent on charging players full retail price for titles originally released in 2014. With the Switch 2 on the horizon, investors panicked at the revelation that the company’s software pipeline is completely barren of decade-old, easily transferable codebases.
We have run the algorithmic models, and the projections for the Switch 2 are frankly terrifying if we are actually forced to sit down and program an original video game from scratch.
Sato added that Nintendo engineers have been working around the clock to determine if the next-generation architecture can somehow support selling 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild a third time, perhaps by adding a slightly different colored tunic to the protagonist or forcing players to assemble the game cartridge themselves out of cardboard.
Following the gloomy outlook, the company’s stock briefly rallied when rumors circulated that Nintendo might simply re-release the original Switch hardware in a slightly darker shade of gray. The valuation plummeted again hours later when analysts pointed out that such a strategy would not cover a five-year fiscal gap. At press time, a visibly sweating Shigeru Miyamoto was reportedly staring at a blank whiteboard, trying to remember how to invent a new Mario brother.