The unexpected announcement of Nintendo Co (T: 7974) that the popular franchise, Super Mario Bros, debuts on the iPhone from Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL), sharply pushed up the Japanese company's shares on Thursday on hopes that it finally conquered the market for mobile games.
Investors are waiting for the new game, Super Mario Run, to be the next big hit of the Japanese company, as it did with the hugely popular Pokemon GO.
"The launch of the famous Nintendo character on the popular all over the world iPhone is one of the best scenarios to which investors might have hoped for," - said Tomoaki Kawasaki from Iwai CosmoSecurities.
Nintendo announced that the game would appear in the App Store in December.
Japanese Developer Shares jumped 13 %, to close at the highest level since the end of July, after the announcement made during the Apple’s presentation of the new iPhone 7.
Shigeru Miyamoto, who created the Mario character more than 35 years ago, presented the version of the game for the iPhone at a presentation in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Players help Mario overcome obstacles, collecting coins along the way. At higher levels, you can compete with other players and create your own "kingdom".
Nintendo for many years resisted the production of mobile games featuring their most famous heroes, trying to protect their business game consoles, despite the fact that this strategy has led to a series of operating losses.
It finally responded to calls from investors to the release of games for mobile devices last year, announced a partnership with a specialist in this area - DeNA Co.
However, questions remain about how Nintendo will profit on mobile games. Despite the success of Pokemon GO, in July, the company warned that it will have a limited impact on the profit, and later reported an operating loss for the first quarter.