Yes, you read that correctly. After over a year of uncertainty over Nintendo’s future, plus the bizarre situation of Miitomo and bringing only one Zelda title to E3, Nintendo has officially become worth more than its direct rival, Sony. And it’s all thanks to one thing: Pokémon GO.
That’s right, the explosion of popularity for the augmented reality title has caused Nintendo’s share price to literally double, jumping by 12% on Tuesday—that makes a 120% increase since Pokémon GO’s launch. Meanwhile, Sony—the company experiencing plenty of success on its own with the PS4—has fallen behind. The last time we saw this happen between these two companies was July 2014.
It’s also worth mentioning that The Pokémon Company is also benefiting in a big way with this mobile release. Nintendo only owns 32% of TPC, as well as the merchandise business Creatures and the original Pokémon developer Game Freak. These other companies are privately owned, however, so it’s harder to gauge how they’ve done since the game’s launch.
And if that didn’t surprise you enough (or maybe this doesn’t surprise you at all), Nintendo even broke a trading record last Friday at the Japanese stock market: Highest value of shares traded in one company in a single day…in this century. Yes, read that again. Literally ¥476 billion in shares were traded inside of a 24 hour period.
Just when you think Nintendo is down and out…they raise the bar again. This company never fails to surprise us, and we can’t wait to see what happens next!
