Japanese gaming company Nintendo has suffered another day of sharp share price falls in response to criticism over its new Super Mario Run phone app. On Monday just over 7 per cent was wiped off the company’s value on the Nikkei, closing the day at ¥24,540.
Since Super Mario Run’s release last Thursday, Nintendo’s value has dropped by 11 per cent whilst shares in DeNA Co, who helped to develop the game, have fallen by close to 15%.
Gamers have criticised how short the game’s demo is and the amount of mobile data the app uses with reports of it using around 50MB per hour.
Super Mario Run currently has a two-and-a-half-star rating on the Apple App Store with investors concerned that the game’s £7.99 price is too high. According to app analysis company App Annie, the game made over $4m on its launch day and reached the number one spot for app downloads in 138 countries. It estimates that the app has been downloaded over 37 million times in the first three days of release with 1,991,000 downloads in the UK.
Sarat Pediredla, CEO of mobile app developer Hedgehog Lab, believes that investors have overreacted to the game’s launch: “While shares have dropped, we wouldn’t be surprised if they make 40 or 50 million pounds from the weekend. A lot of the one-star reviews are not fair; a lot of them are just against the pricing model.
“Because of the perception of mobile games, people are very resistant to paying 8 or 9 pounds.”
Super Mario Run is only the second mobile app the company has developed. The first, a free social networking app called Miitomo, was released in March and reached 10 million downloads in less than two months.
The app, which is currently only available on iOS, is Nintendo’s attempt to break into the mobile gaming market. The download is free but users have to pay money to unlock all the game’s levels.
“It’s not going to change much. It will take a lot more than Nintendo to change the industry,” said Pediredla on the prospect of rising app prices.
Nintendo, which also has a 32% stake in The Pokémon Company, saw its share price soar to ¥31,770 in July following the success of Pokémon Go. Its share price then dropped back down after the company published a statement saying that it hadn’t actually developed the game.
