Nintendo Shares Slump 6% on ‘Legend of Zelda’ Delay | Technology News
2 min readTOKYO (Reuters) -Nintendo Co shares slumped 6% in Tokyo trading immediately after the Kyoto-primarily based gaming business explained it was pushing back the release of the hotly awaited sequel to “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” to spring 2023 from this year’s planned debut.
The drop comes right after Nintendo’s shares had gained 25% calendar year-to-date at Tuesday’s close, shaking off issues that the hit Swap console may possibly have peaked next a hardware refresh in October, and the start of a critically acclaimed “Pokemon” title in January.
“In buy to make this game’s encounter one thing special, the whole development staff is continuing to perform diligently so please wait around a very little lengthier,” Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma stated in a video clip posted to Twitter.
The original “Breath of the Wild” was alone delayed, turning into a Swap start sport in 2017 and promoting more than 25 million units.
The greatly emulated motion-experience was praised for its open planet gameplay. Nintendo introduced a hack-and-slash spin-off, “Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity”, in 2020.
Nintendo is preparing to start the even now untitled Zelda sequel into an marketplace which has just lately observed the launch of adventure video games “Elden Ring” from Kadokawa and Bandai Namco and “Horizon Forbidden West” from Sony.
Irrespective of the Zelda delay, Nintendo has a strong pipeline for 2022, with inky shooter “Splatoon 3” thanks this summer months and two even more Pokemon titles set to start afterwards in the calendar year.
“If you can find a 12 months Nintendo can afford to pay for to force Zelda out of, it really is this yr,” explained Serkan Toto, founder of the Kantan Online games consultancy.
“The fiscal 12 months has not even commenced nevertheless and they have distribute out all of these likely blockbuster titles,” he additional.
Games designed in-household shaped 84% of Nintendo software income in the 3rd quarter ended December. The Swap console has an install foundation of a lot more than 100 million models with extra than 750 million software program models sold.
(Reporting by Sam Nussey Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Copyright 2022 Thomson Reuters.
