Nintendo shares fell 6 percent on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Wednesday, March 30.
It was after the Japanese company said a day before that it was going to delay the expected release of the new edition of “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild”.
It was originally going to be released in 2022 (after several postponements), but now It will not see the light of day until the second quarter of 2023.
Nintendo’s change in launch strategy angered fans of its games and, as collateral damage, impacted the company’s stock.
Nintendo stock in 2022
Wednesday’s decline follows a sharp rise in Nintendo shares so far in 2022, up 25 percent between January and March 29.
The advance of the valuation of the Japanese company (to the low from now to the end of March) is due to the understanding that the Switch console has not yet reached its peak after the hardware update last year and the launch of “ Pokémon” in early 2022.
Eiji Aonuma, producer of Legend of Zelda, asked for “patience” on Twitter.
“To make the video game experience very special, the developer teams are working: wait a little longer,” he published in the face of the avalanche of criticism from fans.
The first “Breath of the Wild” was also delayed for months.
Likewise, when it was released on Switch in 2017 it sold 25 million copies.
Nintendo wants to release the sequel to Legend of Zelda, which still has no title, after generating the highest possible expectation.
The industry is awash with new adventure video game releases, such as Kadokawa’s “Elden Ring” and Sony’s “Horizon Forbidden West”.
100% proprietary games made up 85 percent of Nintendo’s software sales in its latest reported fiscal quarter.
The Switch console is an overwhelming success: more than 100 million units installed with more than 740 million software units sold.
The adventure of the new installment of the game will take place on land, as in the original version, and in the sky, according to Aonuma himself.
He also said that “the game world is going to go much further” and that it will have “many more features, including new encounters and different mechanics than the current ones.”
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