We’ve reported about Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima‘s recent interview with Nikkei multiple times already, but there’s something else that Kimishima said in the interview that is worth reporting on. At one point, Kimishima is asked about how the company is “looking at the profitability in the business for smartphones”. Here is what his response was in full:
Nikkei: How are you looking at the profitability in the business for smartphones?
Kimishima: We’ve published Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and more, but we still haven’t raised them profit-wise. From here on we want to work on various things like upgrading the insides of them.
Suggestion: re-release Super Mario Run and charge 0.99 a level with a $10 cap!
I don’t think it will work
Nope and nope.
Well shutting down your mobile titles (like miitomo was announced to be shutting down) is a pretty poor way to Increase The Profitability of your titles :P
Not only that, charging $10 for only 24 levels in Mario Run that you can breeze through in 52 minutes (worse than Sonic Forces in length but not pricing or structure) and not updating a staple feature of trading/battling for PKMN Go is not helping. Might as well just focus on the Switch. No more 3DS, no more mobile. Put everything in the Switch.
Honestly, if the mobile titles are to increase the consumers for the games on their home consoles and handhelds, as was Iwata’s reasoning for why they ultimately got into mobile by using the mobile games as basically overglorified ads for their main games, then trying to make these mobile games profitable should actually be the last thing they should be concerned about.
In any case, this will limit the buyers for Switch as most casuals won’t get a Switch if they can get roughly the same IPs on their phones. Basically, I don’t expect another Wii where the hardware sales reach over 100m as it only got that high that gen because of casuals who quickly abandoned it for, you guessed it, mobile games on their phones.
Whatever, though. It’s not like I own stock in the company anyway.
This.
Iwata was on to something when he said they should use the mobile-games as bait for the Nintendo hardware. Kiwishima on the other hand just want to make money. He has at least a head between his shoulders and knows that quality will maintain sales, but at the end of the day his business model doesn’t care where the money comes from.
Nintendo games is for Nintendo Fans and a little more “hardcore” gamers than the average mobile gamer. Sure Super Mario Run was hip for a while, but the general consumers just knows the name and doesn’t care much after they died in-game a couple of times. If Nintendo are trying to expand and have mobile as a main source of income, there will be some major “disturbance on the force”. Not that I think it will succeed.
Nintendo is known for gameplay and high quality etc. Hate me if you guys must, but when you’re releasing games on mobiles, they’re bound to s*ck for the one reason or the other. Nintendo will rob themselves for their own qualities when focusing too hard on mobile.
Yep. Look no further than Konami, Capcom, and Square Enix where quality in some of their main games went down because they focused too much on their mobile phone titles during the development of those main games.
I bought Mario run on sale, have not really played it at all.
Miitomo was boring crap.
Fire Emblem Heroes somehow still interests me.
Probably spent more time with it now than I have with any other FE title I have.
Agreed with Miitomo. I used it for 8 months since it was launched and then I stopped to use it.
I still play both SMR and FEH because I have to get the coins and bonuses of everyday
Probably have not missed out on daily bonuses since launch.
Though I seem to have missed out on some free heroes from TT’s and GHB’s.
The only mobile Nintendo game I have is Pokémon Go and I rarely use it. I think they should reduce the price of Mario Run to $5.
Too late for Mario Run, Pokemon Go, Miitomo (although they should move it to the Switch as a default social hub) and even Nintendo Switch online app force feeding their redundant chat service when Discord exist.
So that explains why they’re making a new Mario Kart for mobile instead of Switch, why Pokemon Go is basically dead, why paying $10 for 24 short and automated Mario Run level is complete ass and why Miitomo is going under even though it’s the best Nintendo app of the bunch.
https://youtu.be/XeRop_FOuws?t=66