The president of Nintendo announced that the company has more smartphone games in development and it will continue to support the mobile titles currently on the market. Nintendo entered the mobile market in 2016 with Miitomo and Super Mario Run, even though the company assured fans it would still be focusing on its console and handheld endeavors.
Nintendo’s mobile ventures have had a mixed response, but they resulted in the surprise success of Fire Emblem Heroes. Gamers spent over a billion dollars on Nintendo mobile games to date, but the majority of this cash comes from a single game. Miitomo was eventually discontinued, and Super Mario Run didn’t perform as well as the company hoped. Most of Nintendo’s mobile money comes from Fire Emblem Heroes, which has brought in over six hundred thousand dollars to date.
The incredible success of the Switch led some fans to believe that Nintendo would back off from mobile games, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa answered questions during a recent investor call, and his responses have been uploaded to Nintendo’s website (and translated by Siliconera). Furukawa confirmed that more Nintendo smartphone games are in development, and the company will continue to support the mobile titles that are currently available.
Furukawa also revealed that the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons prompted a resurgence of interest in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. Nintendo’s original intention for its mobile titles was to use them to promote its console games, and this has had its desired effect with the Animal Crossing series. The compatibility between New Horizons and Pocket Camp likely helped here, especially considering the incredible sales of the former.
Nintendo has talked about developing more mobile games in the past, but there haven’t been any announcements since the release of Mario Kart Tour. Some major Nintendo franchises are missing from mobile phones, such as The Legend of Zelda and Metroid series. There are also older franchises that have been abandoned that could also fit well on phones, including F-Zero and Punch-Out!!. There are tons of possibilities in regards to future Nintendo mobile games, and it will be exciting to see what the company comes up with in the future, so long as they avoid the blight of microtransactions.
