If all you wanted for Christmas 2010 was a few shares of Nintendo stock, better make sure you held onto that receipt. In line with the company’s recent trend, stocks continue to fall and investors are becoming increasingly unhappy. Tuesday, after their pre-TGS 3DS-focused press conference, stocks fell five percent, adding to the nearly fifty-percent drop in this year alone. Despite this, President Satoru Iwata looks towards the future with optimism, reflected in this quote from Reuters: “From the end of this year to the beginning of next, we are planning the kind of extensive line-up that has probably never been seen before in the history of video games. We will make an all-out effort to see that the 3DS sells enough to become the successor to the DS.” Nintendo plans to sell 16 million 3DS consoles this year, but the adoption is slow. In the seven months since it’s release, it has only sold just over 4 million. The impatience of fans and investors can be summed up in this quote from Mitsuhige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment:
“Nintendo succeeded by pulling in people who weren’t gamers and their needs now are no longer being filled by Nintendo, they are happy playing games on their mobile phones.”
(Source: CVG)