Nintendo's market cap surges, adds $14 billion thanks to Pokopia's Switch 2 success

Nintendo's new Pokemon spin-off game is a surprise mega-hit, selling over 2 million copies in less than a week. Investors have taken notice, and Nintendo's shares have surged enough to add billions of dollars to the company's market cap.

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Nintendo's latest Pokemon game isn't a traditional release, but that didn't stop it from selling millions of copies. Pokopia is a big success for Nintendo, moving 2.2 million copies in just 4 days and sparking tons of new buzz around the Switch 2.

The game's unexpected sales results, coupled with the ongoing acclaim among fans, have caused Nintendo's share prices to surge, with Bloomberg noting that Nintendo has added $14 billion to the game-maker's market capitalization.

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Nintendo's shares currently sit at 10,220JPY, representing a +19% increase since Pokopia's launch on March 5, and a nearly +20% increase in share price value since the beginning of the month. The game combines some of the most popular mechanics and features in video games, including the casual slice-of-life community building aspect of Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing, matched up with the appeal of the Pokemon world and characters.

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Experts also weighed in on Pokopia's breakout sales, with Joost van Dreunen telling Forbes it was a hit that "nobody saw coming."

Games analyst and consultant Dr. Serkan Toto echoes this sentiment, telling Bloomberg:

"Nobody anticipated this kind of success - no one expected such high quality. It's a very rare case of a Nintendo game accidentally 'blowing up'. It's the best-rated Pokemon game of all time."

Pokopia is also a big hit in Japan, where it sold over 1 million of its units in that four-day span. This is good news for Nintendo, because the company is currently taking a profit loss on each of its region-locked, Japanese-only Switch 2 models, and filling out the installed base quicker rather than later might offer a better value opportunity for consumers, thus enticing them to buy into the ecosystem.