Nintendo unveils new console, shares slide as features underwhelm
Baku, October 21, AZERTAC
Nintendo Co Ltd offered a sneak preview of a new gaming system that can be used both as a traditional console as well as a handheld device, but a lack of revolutionary features helped send its shares sliding 6 percent, according to Reuters.
In a 3-minute video teaser, the Kyoto-based games company unveiled Nintendo Switch, its first new gaming device in four years, which will launch in March 2017. It remained, however, silent on the key issue of pricing.
Its success will be crucial as Nintendo still considers console gaming to be the center of its business, even as casual gaming has moved to smartphones and tablets and as it last console, the Wii U, flopped badly.
If sales disappoint, the company will come under even more pressure to embrace smartphone gaming - something it has only just begun to do.
"The trailer does not show the device being played in interesting new ways, gameplay looks to be surprisingly similar to gaming with any number of other consoles," Takeshi Koyama, a senior analyst at Mizuho Securities, wrote in a report to clients.
Nintendo has sold only 13 million Wii U consoles since its launch in 2012, compared with 101 million sales of its predecessor, the Wii, launched in 2006.
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