Nintendo might have slowed down regarding its iOS and Android game releases but the company has still accumulated roughly 2.2 billion from its variety of smartphone games. Fire Emblem Heroes is the one that’s made the most amount of cash at roughly $1.193 billion in revenue. The Japanese are the ones who make up the majority of spending followed by the United States. Sensor Tower reports that Fire Emblem Shadows has seen a slow start, with 800,000 downloads generating $200,000. Former official Nintendo magazine editor Neil Long said the following to The Game Business about Nintendo’s approach to mobile.
“If you look at the numbers, they’ve made billions of dollars out of mobile,” Long said. “And for most companies that would be great, but Nintendo is a very different company. It ultimately has its core interest in selling consoles and making games for its own consoles, and not being beholden to platform holders like Apple and Google. [Nintendo doesn’t] have control over those platforms. Now Nintendo has movies and theme parks, they are in a position where they can afford to not worry about mobile too much. If the company wasn’t doing so great, like it wasn’t in 2014, 2015 and 2016, maybe they would show a bit more interest in mobile.”
I am glad Nintendo’s general interest in not succumbing to financialization led them to be largely prudent with bad mobile games, but as much as I still like Nintendo and really only play video games to play Nintendo games, it is sad to see the success of the Switch and the decay of their competitors (and more foreigners being on their board) has led them to leaning into financialization in other ways.
I feel that acknowledging the sales numbers of a game or series is a better way to celebrate the success of the creators and the essence of the game itself. Right now, it feels more like: “Our handful of relatively low-effort games make a multibillion-dollar corporation a lot of dosh.”
When developers announce milestones for their games, it tends to feel more genuine and passionate.
RIP Tomonobu Itagaki
Only 2.2B? From 9 game?
Thats bad.
That’s not what I’m interested in. I just want to know when there will be new games on Nintendo platform.
Thats cool n’ all but what does this have to do with general nintendo video games?