Nintendo's stock has dropped 16.5% since the release of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

[Nirolak]

I suspect we'll start hearing about either new mobile partnerships, which IPs they're using on mobile next, or perhaps just their next mobile game at their late January/early February fiscal call.

For those who haven't been following along, Animal Crossing debuted as a major hit in Japan and a moderate hit overseas, and then fell to being a moderate hit in Japan and a low performer overseas.

 

[Bandage]

I thought Nintendo had already said they were looking for new mobile partnerships?
Or was that analyst speculation?

 

[RailWays]

The game didn't turn profits that were expected most likely. The gameplay loop for the game is rather dull, so I'm not very surprised. I stopped playing after one day.

 

[Nirolak]

I thought Nintendo had already said they were looking for new mobile partnerships?
Or was that analyst speculation?

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Those are Wall Street Journal leaks. Nintendo hasn't officially commented yet. We might get a who and what announcement though.

 

[Bandage]

Those are Wall Street Journal leaks. Nintendo hasn't officially commented yet. We might get a who and what announcement though.

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Ah. Gotcha.
They have a call coming up here soon so I'd expect news there.

 

[Lord Brady]

Fucking Lottie's fault.

 

[Guardians]

Why? Because of one Mobile Game?

 

[Smiles]

Messing with Animal Crossing was a risk. It is such a solid IP when done right. I want a Switch version to connect to this.

 

[Nirolak]

Why? Because of one Mobile Game?

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A lot of Nintendo's stock price is basically centered around their mobile initiative, because mobile has such high profit margins. This is why it swings so much with the success of Fire Emblem or the limited success of Super Mario Run.

 

[Aters]

Pokemon Go was such a success that no mobile game they make will ever meet public expectation.

 

[gaiadyne]

I'm not sure if there is any franchise they have that would wow me on mobile. So far their mobile efforts have seemed mediocre compared to the quality of their usual games (I like the collection aspect about Fire Emblem Heroes and pretty much nothing else). I think some of the buzz is off now since people realize the won't be getting the full experience.

 

[Jawmuncher]

I have AC and login daily for the rewards. But I don't see much reason to play it? AC is already a game where you make your own fun and this one takes away even more if that.

Not to mention all the level systems grind the game to a halt.

 

[ghibli99]

Loved it for the first couple hours, used some Google Rewards credits to buy the bottom two tier IAPs, played for another hour or so, and never touched it again. Makes me really want a proper one on Switch.

 

[Nirolak]

Pokemon Go was such a success that no mobile game they make will ever meet public expectation.

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Investors were quite happy with Fire Emblem. They just want things that are making at least $100-$200 million a year, which is pretty standard for flagship mobile games at various companies. Some get up into the billion, yes, but that's not really the baseline.

 

[Guardians]

A lot of Nintendo's stock price is basically centered around their mobile initiative, because mobile has such high profit margins. This is why it swings so much with the success of Fire Emblem or the limited success of Super Mario Run.

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I didn't know that. Thank you for the clarification :)

Edit: I thought the stock price went up because of the success of the Nintendo Switch.

 

[incogneato]

Animal Crossing could not properly monetize itself.

While playing the app I seriously considered whether or not mine was glitched because of how quickly I was doing everything in 15 minute bursts. There needed to be more substance to the app itself or more updates because the ease of accomplishing all of the given tasks quickly makes the game a bore to play.

 

[Mechaplum]

It's all part of Yoko Taro's plan. Don't worry it'll make sense sometime in the next millennia. Hopefully.

 

[mas8705]

I wonder if this will mean that Nintendo might decide to back out from the mobile market and stick with the Switch?

It is a shame to consider, but I guess Animal Crossing on phones isn't really much of a market there.

 

[Dogo Mojo]

I like the idea of Pocket camp quite a lot, the problem is that it's far too limited, even for a mobile title in the series. All your really doing is clicking on very small maps, giving the animals what they want and then waiting until it refreshes. Even checking the store is dull since it's almost always the same handful of items. Even the social aspects of the game are fairly useless

All pocket camp managed to do is make me want a full game on Switch.

 

[Sammy Samusu]

That's OK. It's called a peak.

I was just playing Pocket Camp. There's 0 incentive to spend money on that game. Nintendo is too generous and they won't make a money hungry game. That's not their nature.

Their main goal with mobile games is to advertise their franchises and it's working. Whatever coins they make off mxt is a nice bonus.

 

[JustinBailey]

Pokemon Go was such a success that no mobile game they make will ever meet public expectation.

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Wait until investors see Nintendo's financial position soon, though, IMO.

 

[Zarckoh]

Gacha gacha gacha.

Oh Nintendo... once again going for a wrong business model for your game while also falling on the trap of being too generous. If you are going for the mobile crowd you have to grow a spine.

 

[Alexhex]

I really wonder of it's the monetization strat with this one or if enough people aren't playing it often enough. I'm still checking in like twice a day and the the idea of paying up has never crossed my mind once, whereas fire emblem looked to bend your arm at every oppourtunity. I appreciate pocket camp for not bein gross with it though

 

[ZhugeEX]

Those are Wall Street Journal leaks. Nintendo hasn't officially commented yet. We might get a who and what announcement though.

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If I had to speculate it'd probably be GungHo.

 

[evilmonkey]

Nintendo's biggest problem nowadays is having so many investors that have zero understanding of their business model. Aggressive monetization is what drives most mobile game revenue and Nintendo has stated they won't do it out of fear it'll negatively impact their IPs.

 

[ADee]

Good time to invest before the q4 meeting?

 

[Derrick01]

I tried it for a few hours over a couple of days and there's barely any real game there, even by AC standards. Nothing but a bunch of timers and "reminders" about their microtransactions.

 

[Nirolak]

If I had to speculate it'd probably be GungHo.

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They were explicitly mentioned in the article, so it's very likely, though it sounded like Nintendo was looking for multiple new partners. That would let them get a lot more games going a lot more quickly, given they've went from a 3-5 titles a year goal to only releasing two last year.

 

[Ecotic]

I think the stock is mostly just cooling off from the huge 1-year run-up due to people realizing the Switch is not a historical aberration for Nintendo it seems at first, once you consider the 3DS's 70 million lifetime sales. A 'healthy' normal generation for Nintendo should see 100 million hardware units sold, and it's questionable if the Switch can comfortably cross that to justify the inflated new expectations.

 

[tulpa]

I quite enjoyed the game at first, but I quickly realized they had hollowed out much of what makes Animal Crossing so great. I don't see why they can't fit a more complete Animal Crossing experience onto mobile.

 

[Yukinari]

Its a very generous mobile game but is also too shallow to replicate the animal crossing experience people want.

Like i think youd get more value out of the south park mobile game.

 

[Lyrick]

If they want to appease their investors they need to take a page from MachineZone, Supercell or similar devs and release a title that fosters cliques/social groupings and extremely competitive circumstances that favor those willing to spend a lot of money.
So far Fire Emblem is the only title of theirs that really had any competitive aspects that purchases played any part in and even then it's a fairly small incentive when compared to the majority of the content.

 

[Punished Dan]

Now is the time to buy before they announce Animal Crossing Switch.

Spoiler

I am not a financial advisor

 

[ZhugeEX]

They were explicitly mentioned in the article, so it's very likely, though it sounded like Nintendo was looking for multiple new partners. That would let them get a lot more games going a lot more quickly, given they've went from a 3-5 titles a year goal to only releasing two last year.

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They were? Fair enough then. Sounds like the most likely partnership to me.

I agree they'd be looking at multiple devs though. What are the Machine Zone folks doing these days anyway? :P

 

[Deleted member 32018]

Some of the downturn could be attributed to a lack of news on 2018 games for the Switch. There will probably be an upturn after the direct if anything good is shown.

 

[FunkyFreshB]

As someone who hasn't played any game in the series other than this, I enjoyed it at the start, but it quickly became repetitive. Gathering items and giving them to animals is essentially all you do, so I can see people easily grow bored of it.

Unless you're impatient, there's really no reason to use the Leaf Tickets other than increasing various storages. I've only spent Tickets on getting K.K, Tom Nook, and 1 more crafting space. I currently have around 600 of them, which I think is enough to last me a long while. This makes it so I have no reason to buy them. Note that all my tickets were acquired for free.

With these two things in mind, I can definitely see why this happened. I see no reason to purchase Leaf Tickets, and the playerbase lowers because of the repetetive nature of the game, leading to further loss of potential revenue, thus we have a disappointing game for the investors. At least from what I can gather.

 

[Metal Gear Miyamoto]

The performance of the stock has been quite annoying to see, considering the solid results the Switch has given. I get AC should have performed better, given the IP. But even considering that I still get the idea investors are still focusing to much on mobile.

 

[Aleh]

Well Nintendo's goal was never to make super money hungry mobile games (pretty obvious considering there's no real reason to spend money on this), they said they wanted to use them as a way to make the actual console games sell more from the beginning, and it's already worked even for New Leaf which is 5 years old.

 

[Jraphics Horse]

I think the stock is mostly just cooling off from the huge 1-year run-up due to people realizing the Switch is not a historical aberration for Nintendo it seems at first, once you consider the 3DS's 70 million lifetime sales. A 'healthy' normal generation for Nintendo should see 100 million hardware units sold, and it's questionable if the Switch can comfortably cross that to justify the inflated new expectations.

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Switch should bring a hefty increase in revenue though, more expensive and lots of controller sales vs. the circle pad Pro.

 

[Nirolak]

They were? Fair enough then. Sounds like the most likely partnership to me.

I agree they'd be looking at multiple devs though. What are the Machine Zone folks doing these days anyway? :P

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This is what was noted: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nintendo-looks-for-help-to-raise-its-smartphone-game-1513092568

TOKYO— Nintendo Co. NTDOY 1.84% is looking to expand tie-ups with software developers to strengthen its smartphone-game lineup after an early alliance aimed at cracking the fast-growing mobile market fell behind schedule, people familiar with the matter said.

Nintendo took a 10% stake in smartphone game maker DeNA Co. in 2015, and the two companies said they would introduce five smartphone games by March 2017. They have introduced only four so far, with the latest, "Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp," coming in November.

By collaborating with other software developers in addition to DeNA, Nintendo believes that it could raise the pace of new titles, said people familiar with the plans. It isn't planning to take ownership stakes in its new partners, they said.

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Among the companies that have held discussions about smartphone games with Nintendo is GungHo Online Entertainment Inc., the Tokyo-based maker of the hit "Puzzle & Dragons" smartphone game, said people knowledgeable about the Nintendo-GungHo talks. A GungHo spokeswoman denied that talks with Nintendo took place.

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As for MachineZone, they've interesting had a notable falling of late, with their apps having gone from #1-#3 positions to not even being in the top 10 anymore (see the charts at the bottom of the first post here): https://www.resetera.com/threads/de...-men-have-higher-average-spend-overall.11695/

I suspect the other people they might be looking at are people like CyGames or COLOPL, given their repeat success in the industry and the former's willingness to work with outside publishers. That said, I think you're right that they should consider working with some Western developers as well, and someone like Playrix (Gardenscapes, Homescapes) might be a good choice for their more casual audience, given their huge and growing success both worldwide and even in Japan.

 

[Lusamine]

Shoulda used more predatory and exploitative methods of micro transactions in the game. Game is too laid-back with no reason to spend.

 

[Deleted member 31092]

I wonder if this will mean that Nintendo might decide to back out from the mobile market and stick with the Switch?

It is a shame to consider, but I guess Animal Crossing on phones isn't really much of a market there.

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It means that Nintendo's investors want Nintendo to pull out heavily monetized mobile games, but Nintendo simply see the mobile market as a way to advertise their Switch titles.

 

[julian]

More like investors cashing out for tax purposes on a stock they felt was peaking due to holiday sales and it being December. The price is already climbing back up but I doubt it will do much until the next big announcement.

I mean, I get why you're attributing it to Animal Crossing, but the timing also corresponds with holiday sales and Blacks friday.

 

[Deleted member 24550]

Yeah all these good news stories from Switch coupled with the value of my shares dropping had me scratching my head the past two weeks. Investors don't know what they're doing.

Edit: cashing out for the end of the year e.g. because of taxes would make sense.

 

[Kolx]

The performance of the stock has been quite annoying to see, considering the solid results the Switch has given. I get AC should have performed better, given the IP. But even considering that I still get the idea investors are still focusing to much on mobile.

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Main reason Nintendo stock price is this high is mobile games and especially the insane spike with Pokemon Go (this game alone more than doubled Nintendo market cap) so it's expected for their stock to drop when their mobile new games are not doing as expected especially when they're already releasing fewer games that they wanted at first.

 

[Deleted member 24550]

Main reason Nintendo stock price is this high is mobile games and especially the insane spike with Pokemon Go (this game alone more than doubled Nintendo market cap) so it's expected for their stock to drop when their mobile new games are not doing as expected especially when they're already releasing fewer games that they wanted at first.

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Meh, it's not even half of what it was during the Wii age, so this doesn't make any sense. It's not that high.

 

[Protome]

Honestly, like most of their mobile games so far at launch there just isn't enough interesting content to do. It's a tiny game that expects you to repeat the same shit over and over and pay money to maybe do slightly less of it but it's probably safe to assume most people didn't pay for anything then either dropped off it or just paid it less because there's so little to do. It's dull as hell. Hopefully they fix it. I felt the same way about Fire Emblem Heroes at launch and they fixed that. I'd happily recommend that game to pretty much anyone now, there's shitloads of stuff to do in it.

 

[ZhugeEX]

This is what was noted: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nintendo-looks-for-help-to-raise-its-smartphone-game-1513092568

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Thanks for the link. Agreed on the Western dev thing.

Although I was joking about the Machine Zone thing. Haha.

 

[Kolx]

Shoulda used more predatory and exploitative methods of micro transactions in the game. Game is too laid-back with no reason to spend.

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While this's definitely a reason I don't think it's the main reason the game is falling. When the game was released it was high on the chart but then dropped which indicate the game itself isn't keeping its players engaged. Nintendo should've released something that is closer to the quality of the mainline games instead of half-assed game expecting the mobile audience to take it regardless.

Meh, it's not even half of what it was during the Wii age, so this doesn't make any sense. It's not that high.

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What does Nintendo stock price back in the Wii\DS times have to do with investors current expectations of Nintendo and why they think their stock price deserves its current point?

 

[Dekuman]

Was the release in November? There hasn't been a lot of news since then and if my financial manager is right most portfolio managers sell stocks to lock in gains for the year in November before going away for the holidays.

Sony is also down from their highs though not down by as much

I think we can tease out that the lukewarm success of AC hasn't helped and most managers are in general less bullish on Nintendo's valuation in 2018m