[Economist] 跳跃开始（一）

去年 Economist 关于任天堂的文章

Jump-start

跳跃开始

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Agiant of the console industry has lost a generation of gamers to smartphones. Can it reclaim them?
主机市场的巨头已经失去了一代智能手机上的玩家。任天堂还能再重夺市场吗？

THE trajectory of Nintendo’s stock price in the past year has been worthy of the vaults and free-falls of a particularly exhilarating round of “Super Mario Bros”. The Japanese video-gaming firm’s hit title helped start the era of living-room gaming over three decades ago, when it introduced Mario, the pudgy Italian plumber, to millions. But recently Nintendo has failed to keep pace with the rise of smartphone gaming.

任天堂在过去一年的股票曲线正如“超级马里奥兄弟”的一次跳跃一样不停跳跃。这家日本的主机游戏公司在三十年之前通过将马里奥，一个微胖的意大利水管工，带给数百万的用户开始了客厅游戏的时代。但最近任天堂却不能跟上于智能手机游戏发展的步伐。

Many investors hoped that when the firm announced its first-ever game designed for smartphones in autumn 2015, SuperMario would be the one to make its long-awaited mobile debut. The company’s share price tumbled by 10% on the news that it was only Miitomo, a new chatting app. Then came “Pokémon Go”, a location-based game in which players catch virtual creatures on their screens while roaming the real world. Nintendo’s stock price more than doubled to over ¥32,000 ($318) within a few weeks of its release in July. Its market value briefly overtook that of Sony.

许多投资者希望当任天堂在 2015 年秋季公布第一个专为智能手机设计的游戏时，超级马里奥将会时那个首次出现在智能手机上的角色。当最后公布时发现仅仅是 Miitomo 这样一款新的聊天软件时，公司的股票价格下跌了 10%。然后就是”Pokémon Go“，一个基于地理信息的游戏，玩家可以在现实生活中通过手机捕获虚拟的生物。在七月份发布后的几个星期之内，任天堂的股票价格翻倍并超过了 318 美元。

Then down again. Nintendo’s shares plummeted by the most since 1990 when the firm made it clear that it had less of a stake in “Pokémon Go”, which was primarily developed by Niantic, a Google spin-off, than investors had believed. And up. In September, at Apple’s launch event for the iPhone 7, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto (pictured), guru of the gaming world, stole the show with the promise of “Super Mario Run”, the firm’s first ever Mario game for smartphones. It is being developed with DeNA, a Japanese mobile-gaming firm, for Apple’s iOS operating system, and will make its debut in December.

然后又是下跌。当任天堂公布对于主要由 Google 的 Niantic 开发的这款“ Pokémon Go”游戏并不拥有如同投资者所认为的那样多股份时，公司股价下跌到了 1990 以来的最低值。然后是升值。当苹果在九月份公布 iPhone 7 时，任天堂的宫本茂，游戏界的宗师，以承诺发布会“Super Mario Run”这款任天堂第一个智能手机上的游戏，将苹果发布会变成了任天堂发布会。游戏由一家日本手游公司 DeNA 为苹果的 iOS 系统开发，并将在 12 月发行。

Nintendo’s shares are up by 15% since that announcement and by 38% since the start of the year. The game is likely to be available on Android, Google’s mobile platform, next year. Serkan Toto, a games consultant in Tokyo, expects as many as 1.5 billion downloads across both systems.

任天堂的估价在发布会后上升了 15 %，相较于年初上升了 38% 。游戏很有可能明年在 Google 的手机平台 Android 上发行。东京的游戏顾问 consultant 预测在这两个平台上可以达到 1.5 亿的下载量。