Bloomberg is reporting today that Nintendo has apparently decided against big new mobile gaming projects after disappointing results financially from the crowded market. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said this month that “We are not necessarily looking to continue releasing many new applications for the mobile market.”
While other companies mobile games were blooming during the coronavirus pandemic, some of Nintendo’s have been on the decline including Super Mario Run and the Mario Kart Tour’s Subscription Pass. Nintendo has simply been having trouble finding the right money making model, with the company not wishing to ask players to spend a lot in games in fear of ruining the brand.
“Since the release of Mario Kart Tour in fall 2019, Nintendo’s mobile pipeline is empty,” said Serkan Toto, a mobile games consultant in Tokyo. “In a sense, Nintendo’s enormous success on console reduced the need and the pressure to put resources into mobile.”
“You need an active long-running franchise with hundreds of attractive characters to make a good gacha game and then you’d need to keep adding new characters each month to retain players,” Yasuda said. “Fire Emblem is the only Nintendo franchise capable of doing that.”
“New smartphone games will come, but it’s very likely these will be just alibi releases to appease shareholders,” said Toto.
Not asking for much in Mario Kart Tour? Isn’t the monthly fee like 9€ a month or something? (99NOK i believe). It’s more than Switch online costs.
I*
It is Mario kart tour has to be the worse compare to all microtansaction base Nintendo app games aside from fire emblem heroes
Nice. Fire Emblem Heroes is still the best Nintendo mobile game to me. Possibly of all time in terms of mobile games. (Don’t @ me)
Compared to other mobile/F2P games, that’s still considered cheap. Like the article says, it’s mainly there to appease investors.
They did promise us for a legend of Zelda mobile game.
If people are stuck at home then surely they would play their Switch over Nintendo smartphone games.
Great, get rid of all those crap mobile games. They do nothing but waste time and brainwash ppl.
No
Gee thanks fill
Good. They should re-work the existing phone games into Switch titles now like Dragalia Lost and Fire Emblem Heroes.
I’d honestly play Dragalia Lost on my Switch if I could right now. My phone doesn’t have enough space for 2 mobile games and I ain’t ditching Fire Emblem.
How is this bad news? This is amazing news. Let Nintendo make amazing games for the hybrid home console and the HD 3ds replacement the Switch lite.
F=MA.
Whatever.
Kind of an EA move. Put some lackluster games out on a console to test the waters with, then give up when they don’t sell.
You expect them to put their A-game right out of the game in untested waters? No one would be silly enough to do that.
It’s a smart move to not blow a whole lot of money on to something that you’re assured will work. Nintendo playing it safe with their initial choices was a smart move in my opinion.
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“You need an active long-running franchise with hundreds of attractive characters to make a good gacha game and then you’d need to keep adding new characters each month to retain players,” Yasuda said. “Fire Emblem is the only Nintendo franchise capable of doing that.”
…Pokemon? If nintendo has been a bit smarter with using pokemon for a gacha, they’d probably be at the top of the market. As it stands, Pokemon Masters isn’t very engrossing and super slow to release content to keep people playing.
The thing is that Nintendo doesn’t own all of Pokemon. This is why they don’t get much money from Pokemon GO. Most of the money that makes goes to Niantic and The Pokemon Company.
GOOD
No complaints from me!
“with the company not wishing to ask players to spend a lot in games in fear of ruining the brand.”
Apparently you didn’t tell Intelligent Systems that. Good luck staying competitive in Fire Emblem Heroes without shelling out money. Heroes has not been shy about constantly trying to bait players into spending money.
This is the best piece of news in a long time.
Making mobile games does nothing but ruin the franchise brand name. The quality of those games is not near a fraction of the actual experience that you would normally get on a console.
Having said that I’m surprised that it’s not profitable as we previously thought it was. I mean it doesn’t have to be crazy successful like Candy Crush and Clash Royale to be profitable right?
Pokemon Unite would like a word with you, Bloomberg
Nice blog