You know what is really fickle? The mobile games market. You know what else is fickle? The stock market. Put the two together, and, well… you get the kind of volatility that is pretty hard to replicate otherwise.
Take this- Nintendo’s stock, which has been rising steadily and at record breaking rates ever since the launch of the uber hit mobile game Pokemon GO, has crashed by staggering 17% in one day because Nintendo came out and clarified that it doesn’t have much of an involvement with the title- and that therefore, it doesn’t expect the game’s success to impact its own bottomline much in any way.
Incredibly enough, Nintendo’s stock probably would have crashed even more if the Tokyo Stock Exchange didn’t mandate suspension of trading on all stocks that hit the maximum limit of 18% volatility. But damn- looks like the stock market is pretty short sighted. I don’t think the kind of inflation Nintendo’s stock was seeing was warranted to begin with- but at the same time, I don’t think this kind of normalization makes any sense, either. If nothing else, intangible factors like brand growth and renewed interest in Nintendo and Pokemon products is something that should be considered. Pokemon GO was, in my opinion, a net win for Nintendo.