Investors celebrated Nintendo’s announcement that its popular game franchise Super Mario Bros would debut on Apple’s new iPhone, sending the company’s stock soaring and adding billions to its market value.
Nintendo stocks closed 13 percent higher on Thursday, boosted by enthusiasm over the game maker’s decision to make a new game, Super Mario Run, available exclusively on the iPhone 7, which Apple unveiled a day ago.
The rise in shares underscored investors’ hopes that Nintendo had finally embraced mobile gaming after years of betting on a resurgence of console-based entertainment.
It also followed a summer streak after the release of Pokemon Go, which wasn’t created by Nintendo but brought it windfall profits as it owns a stake in the company that did, Niantic Labs.
“Launching a well-known Nintendo character on the globally penetrated iPhone is one of the best scenarios that investors have hoped for,” Tomoaki Kawasaki, an industry analyst in Osaka was quoted by Reuters as saying.
Nintendo, based in the city of Kyoto, has a market capitalization of $39 billion (34.5 billion). Thursday’s double-digit jump in the company’s shares added $4.5 billion to its market value.
Super Mario Run will debut on Apple’s App Store in December, the game maker said.
cjc/pad (Reuters, AFP)
