Shares of Nintendo surged as much as 18 per cent on Thursday as investors cheered news that its popular game franchise Super Mario Bros would make a debut on smartphones in December.
The announcement of the new game, Super Mario Run, fuelled investors’ hopes that Super Mario would be another mobile gaming hit for the Japanese company akin to the wildly popular Pokemon Go.
“Launching a well-known Nintendo character on the globally penetrated iPhone is one of the best scenarios that investors have hoped for,” said Tomoaki Kawasaki, an analyst at Iwai Cosmo Securities.
Nintendo said it would launch the game initially on Apple’s App Store, but is also planning to release for Google’s Android.
Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of the puppet-inspired Super Mario, gave a short demonstration of the game at Apple’s annual iPhone release event on Wednesday.
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