Category: 3. Business

“It’s almost impossible for any developer who is now of working age to have grown up without at least some influence from Nintendo,” says Keza MacDonald, author of the forthcoming book Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play, based off years of reporting on the company as a games journalist. “It is still, to this day, making games differently from everyone else.”

Indeed Nintendo has largely sidestepped the graphics arms race that has bedeviled both its hardware and software competitors, instead focusing on what Game Boy designer Gunpei Yokoi affectionately termed “withered technology”: Using well-established technology and focusing on making something fun instead. That strategy has also allowed Nintendo to avoid the high costs and constant retraining that are hamstringing its  competitors. 

The Japanese game developer embraced “the principle of finding a playful way to design things that aren’t necessarily at the cutting-edge,” explains MacDonald, who currently writes about gaming for The Guardian. “That’s been a part of Nintendo’s philosophy since before it was even making video games.”

The Japanese company has what MacDonald deems a “slightly conservative” approach, ensuring that it maintains healthy profit margins and builds up large reserves of cash. “Nintendo always operates with an understanding that its next product might not be a hit,” she says. 

Nintendo released the Switch 2, its latest video game console, earlier this year. While a few commentators griped that Nintendo’s latest version was just more powerful (and more expensive) than the last, gamers seem to have flocked to the new device. The company now expects to sell 19 million Switch 2 units by March 2026, the end of its fiscal year. The company reported 1.1 trillion Japanese yen ($7 billion) in revenue between March and September, more than double what it generated the same period a year ago. It also earned 199 billion yen ($1.3 billion) in profit, an 83% jump. Shares are up 46% for 2025 so far.

Nintendo was founded in 1889 as a company making playing cards and eventually moved to making toys in the 1960s. It shifted to video games in the 1970s, and had its first hit with Donkey Kong, developed by Shigeru Miyamoto, who eventually designed beloved franchises like Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda. 

The game industry is known for its churn: Studios expand and contract according to changing demand. Around 10% of developers reported being laid off last year, and over 40% said they felt the effects of layoffs, according to a survey from the Game Developers Conference. “What that does is it robs companies of not just the knowledge, but also the security that helps people do their best work,” MacDonald says. 

Nintendo, on the other hand, has sidestepped this boom and bust cycle. The company revealed earlier this year that its Japan-based employees had an average tenure of 15 years.

“The people who first made Nintendo’s hits are still working at the company,” MacDonald says. “For the last 50 years, these people have been passing down knowledge and training up a new generation of Nintendo creatives.” 

She adds that the company also rejects hierarchy when it comes to design. “It’s not like the oldest guy gets to decide what’s a good idea and what isn’t. Everyone puts ideas in.”

Not all of Nintendo’s experiments work. Take the company’s Wii U console, released in 2012. Unlike its predecessor, the wildly successful Wii, the Wii U was a flop, selling barely 14 million units. Yet Nintendo took some of the design lessons from this failure and put them towards the Nintendo Switch—which, at 154 million units sold, is close to being the top-selling console of all time. 

That’s just one of the things that MacDonald thinks that other companies—and not just those in the gaming industry—can learn from Nintendo. 

“A failed idea is often a step towards the next hit you’re going to have.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 28 (Reuters) – Brazilian state-run oil firm Petrobras could review some of the 15 wells it plans to drill in the so-called Equatorial Margin, as Brent oil prices are expected to remain low in the coming years, its CEO said on Friday.

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“We had a large set of wells for the Equatorial Margin; some were prioritized, others were, let’s say, deprioritized depending on the price of Brent crude oil,” Petrobras Chief Executive Officer Magda Chambriard said in a press conference.

She did not say how many of the 15 wells could be reviewed.

Petrobras’ cuts will also impact extraordinary dividends to shareholders, Chief Financial Officer Fernando Melgarejo told journalists, saying the possibility of doling out extra cash in the coming years is low.

Despite the cuts, Petrobras expects to maintain its oil production at some 2.6 million or 2.7 million barrels per day until 2034 after ramping it up around 2027, Chambriard said.

These oil production levels represent the peak Petrobras expects to reach in the next five years under its new business plan.

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Theo Leggett
Business correspondent

The issue was discovered after a JetBlue aircraft en-route from Mexico to the United States in October experienced a ‘sudden drop in altitude’.

The plane made an emergency landing, with reports at the time suggesting 15 to 20 people suffered minor injuries.

It’s thought the incident was caused by intense solar radiation, which corrupted data in a computer used to help control the aircraft.

Now action is being taken to prevent further problems. About 6,000 aircraft worldwide are thought to be affected, all of them of the A320 family, which also includes the A319 and A321 models.

According to Airbus, the majority can be fixed with a relatively simple software update. However, some 900 older planes will need replacement computers, and will have to be taken out of service until they can be fixed.

Airbus said on Friday it was ordering an immediate software change on a “significant number” of its bestselling A320 family of aircraft in a move that industry sources said would bring disruption to half the global fleet, or thousands of jets.

The move must be carried out before the next routine flight, according to a separate bulletin to airlines seen by Reuters, with the UK’s civil aviation authority warning of “some disruption and cancellations” to flights over the coming days.

It also comes during one of the busiest travel weekends of the year in the United States.

Airbus said in a statement a recent incident involving an A320-family aircraft had revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls.

“Airbus acknowledges these recommendations will lead to operational disruptions to passengers and customers,” it said.

Industry sources said the incident that triggered the unexpected repair action involved a JetBlue flight from Cancún, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey, on 30 October, in which several passengers were hurt after a sharp loss of altitude.

Flight 1230 made an emergency landing at Tampa, Florida, after a flight control problem and a sudden uncommanded drop in altitude, prompting an FAA investigation.

JetBlue and the FAA had no immediate comment.

For about two-thirds of the affected jets, the recall will result in a relatively brief grounding as airlines revert to a previous software version, industry sources said.

Still, that comes at a time of intense demands on airline repair shops, already plagued by shortages of maintenance capacity and the grounding of hundreds of Airbus jets due to long waiting times for separate engine repairs or inspections.

Hundreds of the affected jets may also have to have hardware changed, threatening much longer waits, the sources said.

American Airlines and Hungary’s Wizz Air said they had already identified which of their aircraft would need the software fix. United Airlines said it was not affected.

American Airlines, in a statement, said about 340 of its 480 A320 aircraft require the software replacement, and it expects the majority of those fixes to be “complete today and tomorrow”, with about two hours required for each plane.

Wizz Air said “some flights over the weekend may be affected” and passengers who booked via the website or app would be told about any changes.

A spokesperson said: “The safety of our customers, crew and aircraft is always our number one and over-riding priority. We apologise for any inconvenience caused by circumstances outside of our direct control.”

Lufthansa said it expected a “small number of flight cancellations or delays over the weekend” as it too complied with Airbus’s instructions regarding the necessary work.

Air India said it expected “longer turnaround times and delays to operations”.

There are about 11,300 A320-family aircraft in operation, including 6,440 of the core A320 model, which first flew in 1987.

The setback appears to be among the largest mass recalls affecting Airbus in its 55-year history and comes weeks after the A320 overtook the Boeing 737 as the most-delivered model.

The A320 was the first mainstream jetliner to introduce fly-by-wire computer controls.

The bulletin seen by Reuters traced the problem to a flight system called ELAC (Elevator and Aileron Computer), which sends commands from the pilot’s side-stick to elevators at the rear. These in turn control the aircraft’s pitch or nose angle.

The computer’s manufacturer, France’s Thales said in response to a Reuters query that the computer complies with Airbus specifications and the functionality in question is supported by software that is not under Thales’ responsibility.

The vehicle is the second entirely Varda-made vehicle and carries a government payload.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Nov. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Varda Space Industries announced today that their fifth mission, W-5, successfully launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Lompoc, California aboard the Transporter-15 rideshare mission with SpaceX.

W-5 is the company’s fifth launch overall, and fourth launch of 2025. The vehicle carries a government payload funded through the Prometheus program, a partnership between the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and commercial space entities. Prometheus is addressing a national security need to accelerate the ability to conduct novel science and technology experiments in the extreme reentry environment through a low-cost, high cadence flight testbed enabled by industry providers. Previous flights funded through Prometheus include Varda’s W-2 and W-3 missions.

Dual-use flights leveraging commercial entities like Varda provide the reentry test community with a novel, low-cost approach to iterative hypersonic science and technology experimentation. The unique aerothermal chemistry of the reentry environment is impossible to fully simulate or replicate on the ground, and flight testing is the best way to advance comprehensive understanding of the reentry environment.

Varda’s W-series hypersonic reentry capsule is the lowest cost, most rapid, recoverable option to reproduce the most challenging hypersonic and reentry flight environments. Varda’s capsule enters the atmosphere at 18,000 miles per hour and hits Mach 25+ on every mission before landing by parachute on Earth. 

“With W-5, AFRL and Varda again demonstrated that hypersonic flight testing can be done routinely and affordably,” said Brandi Sippel, Vice President of Mission Management at Varda Space Industries. “Each Prometheus mission helps expand access to the reentry environment, accelerating the science and engineering that define the future of hypersonic systems.”

The W-5 vehicle consists of three Varda-made components: the hypersonic reentry capsule, the satellite bus, which provides power, navigation and propulsion in orbit, and an ablative heatshield made of C-PICA. The entire W-series vehicle is produced at Varda’s El Segundo headquarters.

About Varda 

Varda Space Industries is building the infrastructure for a thriving orbital economy, from in-orbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable and economical hypersonic reentry capsules. The company operates out of El Segundo, California with office and industrial production space and has office space in Washington, D.C. and Huntsville, Alabama. Follow Varda on X (@vardaspace), Instagram (@vardaspaceindustries), and LinkedIn.

Alex Pearlman: [email protected]

SOURCE Varda Space Industries Inc.

Tencent Music Entertainment Group (NYSE:TME) shares have seen some movement recently, driven partly by shifts in investor risk appetite and changing market sentiment around Chinese technology stocks. Over the past month, TME has experienced a moderate decline, which highlights an evolving outlook for the sector.

See our latest analysis for Tencent Music Entertainment Group.

Despite some turbulence in the past month, Tencent Music Entertainment Group’s momentum over the longer term is hard to argue with. After a 21.5% slide in the 1-month share price, its year-to-date share price is still up an impressive 58.9% and the 3-year total shareholder return stands at a hefty 148.3%. Recent pricing shifts have more to do with evolving investor sentiment in the Chinese tech sector than with any fundamental weakness, and TME still commands positive attention from growth-focused investors.

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Given recent volatility and solid long-term returns, the key question is whether Tencent Music Entertainment Group’s current valuation offers true upside or if the market has already factored in all future growth potential.

Tencent Music Entertainment Group’s narrative-implied fair value stands well above its last close, outlining a case for significant upside based on forward-looking financial drivers and an evolving business model.

Proprietary content development, exclusive partnerships with Korean labels and Chinese artists, and investments in original artist incubation strengthen content differentiation, support premium pricing, and reduce long-term content costs. These factors contribute to higher gross margins and a defensible market share. Technology investments, including AI-powered personalization and innovative ad formats such as incentivized ads and ad-based membership models, are driving higher advertising revenue, improved operational efficiency, and lower customer acquisition costs. This is boosting both top-line growth and net profit margins.

Read the complete narrative.

Which bold assumptions about top-line growth, operating margins, and the value of original content are driving such a bullish take? Find out what really powers the narrative’s rich valuation, from technology breakthroughs to the delicate balance of profitability—all revealed only when you read the full perspective.

Result: Fair Value of $27.47 (UNDERVALUED)

Have a read of the narrative in full and understand what’s behind the forecasts.

However, margin pressure from lower-profit segments and increased regulatory scrutiny could quickly challenge the positive outlook for Tencent Music Entertainment Group’s growth trajectory.

Find out about the key risks to this Tencent Music Entertainment Group narrative.

If you see things differently or want a deeper dive into the numbers, you can build your own analysis in just a few minutes. Do it your way

A good starting point is our analysis highlighting 5 key rewards investors are optimistic about regarding Tencent Music Entertainment Group.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Companies discussed in this article include TME.

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