Game On: ‘Super Mario Galaxy’ nets year’s biggest film opening

“Game On” is The Fly’s weekly recap of the stories powering up or beating down video game stocks.

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NEW RELEASES: This week’s most notable new release is Nintendo’s (NTDOY) “Pokemon Champions,” which releases on April 8 for Switch, with a mobile release slated for later this year. Also out this week is the PlayStation 5 (SONY) port of Bethesda’s (MSFT) 2023 role-playing game “Starfield,” which had previously only been playable on PC or Xbox Series X/S. The port is available on PS5 April 7.

‘SUPER MARIO GALAXY MOVIE’: Universal Pictures’ (CMCSA) and Nintendo’s “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” has earned an estimated $372.5M in worldwide box-office sales, the biggest opening of 2026 so far, Ben Fritz of The Wall Street Journal reported. The movie sold $190M in tickets through Sunday in the U.S. and Canada. The news comes days after Variety reported that the film had a domestic gross of $34.5M on its April 1 opening day, making it the biggest opening day for a film in 2026 so far, surpassing Amazon’s (AMZN) “Project Hail Mary.” “Mario Galaxy” also had a bigger opening day than its 2023 predecessor “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which collected $31M in its opening day.

‘RESIDENT EVIL’: Capcom’s (CCOEY) “Resident Evil Requiem” continues to have incredible success on PlayStation 5, clearing 2.8M units sold in the platform and 1.9M in March alone, according to Alinea Analytics’ Rhys Elliott. Though “Requiem” sold more units at launch on Steam than any other platform, including PS5, Xbox Series, and Nintendo Switch 2, the game has actually made more money on PlayStation, generating over $200M in gross revenue on PS5 versus Steam’s $167M, Elliott said. The difference is due to regional pricing and different geographical distribution of Steam’s audience, Elliott noted.

TAKE-TWO/WELLS FARGO: Wells Fargo lowered the firm’s price target on Take-Two (TTWO) to $293 from $295 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. The firm believes investor concerns on mobile 3P data are misplaced, but still sees a tough setup into EPS given initial FY27 guide is likely conservative.

ROBLOX/CITI: Citi said that data from RoMonitor suggests Roblox (RBLX) average concurrent user trends consistent with Q2 bookings of $1.72B, or about 8% below the Visible Alpha consensus bookings for Q2 of $1.87B. The firm maintained a Buy rating and $90 price target on Roblox shares.

MORE VIDEO GAME NEWS:

• Saudi-owned MiSK raised its stake in Capcom to 6.04% from 5.03%
• Switch 2 sales in the U.K. soared 154% in March following the release of “Pokemon Pokopia,” The Game Business reports
• Sony Interactive Entertainment acquired Cinemersive Labs