Nintendo's popular Switch gaming console officially went on sale in China on Tuesday. The hype created by the official release of the gaming system in the second-largest economy in the world raised a lot of investor expectations, resulting in Nintendo's share prices surging to a 19-month high.
The Japanese gaming company had partnered with Chinese tech giant Tencent to bring its console to the Chinese market. Once reservations were opened on Monday on the popular Chinese e-commerce website JD.com, over 105,000 people immediately reserved to buy a unit.
Another Chinese e-commerce called Fenqile reportedly received thousands of orders for the gaming console as well. A spokesperson for the site mentioned in an interview that the Nintendo Switch was one of their most popular products on the platform over the past years.
During the official release date of the gaming console in China, Nintendo saw its share prices surging by as much as 2.9 percent. The company's share prices hit their highest intraday level since May 2018.
Market analysts have speculated that Nintendo could potentially sell more than 100,000 units of its consoles before the year ends. A report from Wedbush Securities estimates that Nintendo could sell as much as 10 million units of the gaming console in China over the product's lifetime. Since it was released in 2017, Nintendo has so far sold around 41.67 million units of the console worldwide.
China has proven itself to be quite a unique and difficult market for gaming console makers such as Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft. The country lifted its ban on gaming consoles in 2014, which meant that most gamers in the country were more used to playing their games on their smartphones and personal computers. As of this year, gaming consoles only account for about 1.3 percent of the total video games revenue in China.
Nintendo likely wants to increase its share of the market with the release of the Switch, which is why it had partnered with Tencent to rollout China-specific versions of its products. Sony and Microsoft, which have released their respective consoles in China, had very limited success. This was partly blamed on the lack of interest on home consoles from Chinese gamers due to their preference for free-to-play games on mobile devices.
Analysts have stated that Nintendo still has an uphill battle ahead of it as it will have to persuade Chinese consumers who are used to free games on their phones to buy its consoles. Nintendo does have the advantage of having franchises exclusive to its systems, including popular properties such as Mario, Pokemon, and Zelda.
