Nintendo shares fell 3.5% on Wednesday as investors reacted negatively to the company’s E3 announcements, including a delay to Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
It was the company’s biggest one-day decline since April and knocked $1 billion offNintendo’s market value, according to theFinancial Times.
However, the FT also noted that Nintendo’s stock is “perennially volatile” and pointed out that at close on Wednesday it was up nearly 30% year to date.
The decline continued on Thursday as shares in Nintendo fell 1.55%.
During aNintendo Directbroadcast on Tuesday, the platform holderdelayed Animal Crossing: New Horizonsfrom its previously announced 2019 launch window to July 20, 2025.
The last mainline entry in the series, 2012’s Animal Crossing: New Leaf forNintendo 3DS, sold over 12.2 million copies.
While Animal Crossing’s delay will hit Nintendo’s sales for the current fiscal year, the company still has several high-profileSwitchreleases scheduled to arrive in 2019, includingNovember’s Pokémon Sword and Pokémon ShieldandLuigi’s Mansion 3.
On TuesdayNintendo also announced a direct sequelto Switch launch titleThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time and one of the console’s best-performing releases, having sold some 12.8 million copies as of March 2019. A launch window for the game wasn’t confirmed.
The FT says Nintendo investors may also be concerned by a lack of confirmation of new Switch hardware, with a widely tipped cheaper model having helped lift the Kyoto-based company’s share price this year.
On Wednesday the Wall Street Journal claimed two new Switch models, including a more portable version of the console targeted at a younger audience,had entered production.
