Nintendo Stock Takes A Hit

The market didn’t take the news of Nintendo’s year-over-year drop in Wii sales well. Despite having the bestselling hardware in the United States, that 17% drop in sales did some damage to Nintendo’s stock price.

While the week was mostly positive for Nintendo—it had announced sales of 435,000 Nintendo DSi handhelds in its first week—it appears that yesterday’s data on an industry-wide drop in sales hit Nintendo squarely in the stocks. Bloomberg reports that the stock dropped about 6.6% this morning, but as the day went on, it settled a little lower, ultimately dipping 7.5%.

Nintendo of America big cheese Reggie Fils-Aime says the industry is still “very healthy.”

As Nintendo didn’t have a multi-million unit seller last month as it did in March 2008 (Super Smash Bros. Brawl), we shouldn’t be surprised at dropping sales. Nintendo did manage to sell more than 800,000 copies of Pokémon Platinum for the Nintendo DS, though.

“Our launch schedules are more spread out so we’re going to have these tough comparisons month to month,” Fils-Aime said in an interview yesterday. “But if you look at the overall trend of our business, it continues to be very healthy.”

Nintendo Shares Fall After Wii Sales in U.S. Drop 17% (Update1) [Bloomberg]