If Nintendo hoped that yesterday’s Direct could start to reverse the company’s declining share price, it’ll be bitterly disappointed. The very busy but ultimately lackluster event saw a recent slight recovery in market confidence wiped out entirely, as yet again the Japanese firm somehow thought itself above mentioning Mario.
Nintendo has always marched to the beat of its own drum, and given its Rhythm Heaven series we know that drum to be the maddest available, but the company’s continued refusal to acknowledge the Mario-shaped hole in the Switch 2 line-up is proving enormously costly. Following May’s huge hardware price hikes (by far the largest in Japan), and the ongoing silence around big game announcements for the year-old console, its share price has been in freefall for most of 2026. A full third of Nintendo’s value has been wiped since the year began, and while the start of June had seen the direction of the graph finally point gently upward, that’s all gone again following a seven-percent drop after June 9’s Nintendo Direct.
With the original Super Mario Bros. releasing in September of 1985, 2025-2026 marks the 40th anniversary of Super Mario as a franchise, but you wouldn’t know it from Nintendo’s efforts. Yesterday’s Direct actually mentioned the anniversary, sparking some belief that perhaps there could be something happening, only to reveal it was for a temporary (and bewilderingly convoluted) in-game texture pack for Donkey Kong Bananza. It’s like Nintendo was trolling.
Missing-in-action platforming
Losing a third of its value would usually be enough to stir a company into doing something significant, and perhaps Nintendo believed that a vague teaser for a Zelda remake could be enough to reverse its fortunes? An update of one of the most beloved entries in the adored franchise, Ocarina of Time, is unquestionably fantastic news! But it would have had far more of an impact had it not been heavily rumored ahead of time, such that almost everyone watching was sitting through the 743’d announcement of an action-RPG port in anticipation of it, only to be fobbed off with a slow pan over a tapestry and meaningless glimpse of “Nintendo Hire This Man” Link. The game’s out this year: Nintendo has footage to show. But that’s not what Nintendo does, right? Nintendo’s focused on Star Fox right now, so eat your tiny teaspoon of Zelda news and be happy.
That might—kind of—still work on fans, but it obviously wasn’t ever going to impress shareholders. And no, I don’t particularly care about what profiteers want from their gambling, but I do want a strong and successful Nintendo where no one will lose their jobs, one that’s in a position to take the kinds of big, risky swings that once defined the corporation. I also, as a person who wants to play original Nintendo games, am getting increasingly worried that I might have wasted a lot of money on buying a Switch 2.
Don’t keep digging
Let’s maintain perspective: Nintendo is not in immediate trouble. That’s remarkable, given most companies, if they took this big of a hit to their share price in a single year, would be in panic mode. In fact, Nintendo’s current value still leaves it ahead of where it was pre-2024. Its peak around the summer of 2025 was exceptionally high, the apex of ten years of near-continuous growth, and while the drop is massive, it’s still at four times its 2015 value. Yet it’s impossible not to recognize these numbers as the result of some huge mistakes.
In May, Nintendo was resoundingly shown that the lack of a new 3D Mario announcement was doing a lot of damage, but perhaps it’s indicative of how frustratingly stubborn the company is that, even then, the industry wasn’t expecting a Super Mario reveal yesterday. That the Switch 2 launched without such a game was mystifying, but to be over a year into the console sequel’s lifetime and still not have even a tease that something is coming is beyond comprehension. Obviously there’s a team at Nintendo working on it, having seemingly been waylaid by making Donkey Kong Bananza instead (and yet even then missing the Switch 2 launch), so just say so! Because at this point, Nintendo’s standard aloof indifference is increasingly being perceived as something having gone very, very wrong.
If Nintendo continues to stick defiantly to its current plans, that means we’ll hear about nothing but Star Fox until its June 25 release and then likely get notice of a July Zelda Direct to reveal more details about what Ocarina of Time‘s new version actually entails. Then there will be the first proper trailer for next year’s Zelda movie and all the surrounding fuss, and if there’s any chance of a Super Mario announcement it’ll be pushed to September at the earliest. That’s what Nintendo would likely do even if it had a holiday 2026 release in mind, because it’s so absolutely determined to work to its own schedules. But surely now, surely as it watches its own value continue to plummet, someone will have to do something? Or is it so spectacularly stubborn that it would rather watch itself collapse than have Miyamoto acknowledge a Mario game before the date he wrote for it in his calendar?
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