Nintendo on Wednesday said it will allow current Switch games to be played on the hit console’s successor as it looks to drum up excitement among its current user base for the highly-anticipated device.

Shares of Nintendo closed 5.8% higher in Tokyo on Wednesday, after the announcement.

“Investors think this is a sign Nintendo’s next device will not be a risky experiment but rather a continuation,” Serkan Toto, CEO of Tokyo-based games consultancy Kantan Games, told CNBC.

“I believe investors want Nintendo to adopt the iPhone approach of gradually improving a winning product instead of trying to reinvent the wheel with every new console generation.”

Backward compatibility of games is critical for console makers for several reasons: firstly, when new consoles launch, they often do not have a huge amount of games to choose from. Making older games available for the new Switch will boost the device’s appeal on this front.

Secondly, current Switch users who are thinking of purchasing new games ahead of the new console launch may hold off until after its debut. Making current games playable on the Switch’s successor removes that concern.

The Switch is Nintendo’s second-best selling console in history, behind the Nintendo DS.

But demand for the Nintendo Switch, which was first released in 2017, is slowly beginning to fade — albeit from high levels. Investors have been waiting for more details about the console’s successor, which the company said it will announce in its fiscal year ending March 2025.

Nintendo managed to breathe new life into the nearly eight-year-old console last year by releasing games involving top brands like Zelda and Pokemon, as well as expanding into areas like movies.

Wise posted a 55% jump in profit in the first half of its 2025 fiscal year Wednesday, citing customer growth and expanding market share.

The British digital payments firm said that its first-half profit totalled £217.3 million, up from £140.6 million in the same period a year ago.

That came on the back of a 25% increase in active customers, with Wise reporting a total of 11.4 million consumer and business clients.

Revenues at the money transfer platform climbed 19% year-on-year for the period to £591.9 million, Wise reported Wednesday.

Shares of Wise surged as much as 8% shortly after the London market opened Wednesday, adding to gains from Tuesday on a partnership with Standard Chartered to power the bank’s cross-border payments offering for retail customers. The stock was last up almost 6% as of 8:20 a.m. London time.

Earlier this year, Wise issued a sales warning that sent shares of the U.K. online payments firm down as much as 21%.

Back in June, Wise said it was expecting underlying year-over-year income growth of 15-20% for its fiscal 2025, much lower than the 31% growth clip it achieved in the 12 months ending in March 2024.

The softer guidance came off the back of a series of price reductions.

Last month, Wise reported a 17% increase in underlying income for the second quarter of 2024.

The firm also said it was on track to achieve an underlying profit before tax (PBT) margin of 13% to 16% in the medium term — reiterating previous guidance from June — and wouldn’t have to make “further material investments in reduced pricing” in the second half.

On Wednesday, Wise said that its underlying PBT margin for the first-half period was 22%, above its target range of 13% to 16%.

However, the firm added that investments it’s made in reducing pricing will take that margin down to a level close to that target range for the second half of its 2025 fiscal year.

Last week, Wise’s billionaire CEO and co-founder Kristo Käärmann was fined £350,000 fine by the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority for failing to report an issue with his tax filings.

Google has been moderating and removing employees’ internal election-related conversations, CNBC has learned. 

Ahead of Tuesday’s U.S. elections, Google executives warned employees to keep political opinions and statements away from a popular internal discussion forum called Memegen, according to correspondence viewed by CNBC. Despite the warnings, employees continued posting memes related to the election and criticizing the company’s policies on Tuesday.

The most recent leadership guidance shows the company is taking expanded action to temper internal political discussions. Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday sent a memo reminding employees that people turn to the company’s services for “high-quality and reliable information.” That includes through the company’s Google Search, Google News and YouTube services.

“Whomever the voters entrust, let’s remember the role we play at work, through the products we build and as a business: to be a trusted source of information to people of every background and belief,” Pichai wrote. “We will and must maintain that.”

As one of the most important tech leaders in the U.S., Pichai himself has been pulled into the broader political discussions of late. Republican nominee Donald Trump claimed to have multiple phone calls with Pichai in recent weeks.

Google has been cracking down on internal conversations since 2019 when the company introduced a policy barring employees from making statements that “insult, demean, or humiliate” their colleagues. The rules also discouraged employees from engaging in a “raging debate over politics or the latest news story.”

That policy signaled a significant culture shift for the company. Some employees pushed back against the restrictions, saying they were too broad, and in 2020, the company said it was expanding its internal content moderation practices, requiring employees to more actively moderate internal discussions, CNBC found at the time.

Since 2021, Google has dealt with internal dissent regarding Project Nimbus, which is a $1.2 billion joint contract with Amazon to provide the Israeli government and military with cloud computing and AI services. Google briefly shut down an internal message board this March after employees posted comments about the company’s Nimbus contract.

In a 2019 settlement, the U.S. National Labor Board ordered Google to post a list of employee rights at its headquarters that included the right to discuss workplace conditions. That came after a former Google employee filed a complaint alleging that the company restricted free speech and fired him for expressing conservative views, which Google refuted.

The company declined to comment.

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