Back in the Wii U/3DS era, Nintendo’s investors were constantly begging them to get into the mobile gaming market. There was a widespread belief that Nintendo could make far more money from mobile games than they could make from releasing games on their own platforms.
Now Nintendo have been supporting mobile games for more than five years, and the results for their mobile games (excluding Pokemon Go which they don’t fully own) are surprisingly awful:
https://imgur.com/a/6efgFYq
The most notable thing here is that Fire Emblem Heroes has made more money than all of their other franchises COMBINED. This is pretty funny considering that when investors were begging Nintendo to get into mobile, they were definitely thinking that “ Super Mario mobile” or “Mario Kart Mobile” would be doing huge numbers. I doubt anybody expected Fire Emblem to be their one standout success.
While the failure of Super Mario Run can be blamed on the game’s $10 price tag, Mario Kart Tour and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp have no such excuse. Those two games are aggressively monetised with microtransactions, lootboxes, monthly passes, etc.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing New Horizons have generated billions of dollars in revenue for Nintendo, FAR more than their respective mobile games.
Dr. Mario World performed extraordinarily badly, making only $14 million. I think it may be one of the least successful Nintendo games EVER. A $60 game selling over 300,000 units would make more than that!
And even Fire Emblem Heroes hasn’t been THAT big compared to other Japanese and Chinese gacha games. Genshin Impact makes $2 billion per year, and that was a brand new IP. Fate/Grand Order has made over $7 billion since its launch in 2015.
Why do you think Nintendo’s mobile games have underperformed so badly, relative to the massive popularity of their IPs?
by PokoWeebo23
50 Comments
I think partially it was due to having the terrible micro transactions in a franchise that otherwise never had them before (Mario Kart Tour)
I do miss Dragalia
Because most of their mobile games are ass
Am I the only one surprised that Dr Mario World made as much as $14m? I never heard anyone talk about it.
I think it’s lack of execution. Nintendo releases lackluster mobile games because it feels like they don’t want to overplay their hand on mobile, but at the same time we have really polished games that just do gacha or monetization better.
Examples: Genshin, Arknights and anything by Supercell
I played Pocket Camp for a few months on launch… it wasn’t fun. It was grindy like any other random mobile game with a paint of Animal Crossing. Sad to have seen some of the grind carry to New Horizons.
Dragalia Lost looked cool but my phone at the time was bad.
They didn’t do a very good job executing the mobile game version and it’s just a small taste of the full experience so it will never replace the mainline games. Plus the aggressive monetization makes it way more expensive in the long run when you can just pay $60 for Mario Kart that has far more superior gameplay and complete experience.
If they wanted to make bank, just release Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow for mobile and charge whatever they want.
Erm….ever heard of Pokémon go? I know Nintendo only jointly owns it blah blah but they obviously profit from it
Miitomo was so much fun. I also miss Dragalia Lost.
Damn, no mention of Miitomo?
1. Mobile gamers don’t have standards. I’m not saying Super Mario Run is a work of art (hell, I’ll go out of my way to say I don’t like it), but Nintendo did their best to make a complete game on mobile to sell to people for a one time $10 payment with zero microtransactions and everyone turned their noses up at it. They do the exact opposite with Mario Kart Tour, making it truly a “F2P” game that constantly incentivizes you to invest in gacha pulls and subscription services to always be spending money and people still hate it! I feel the obvious answer to why Fire Emblem Heroes is their best performing mobile game is because its target demographic (weebs w/ waifu/husbando fixations and gambling addictions) is already known to love and dump money into anime gacha, so it’s the only game that’s really made to succeed on mobile.
2. Nintendo’s games are known for being traditional and naturally feel a little “off” when played on a phone with touch controls. It’s 2023 and both Sony and Microsoft have invested resources into being able to play their games (streaming) on smartphones with controller support, either their console controllers connected with Bluetooth or telescopic controllers. I feel at the VERY least, Nintendo should put the NSO “Virtual Console” games on phones and release their own telescopic controller. I think that would be a perfect mobile option for them without them having to pretend they’re something they’re not.
Probably because Nintendo still wants to stick with their own hardware and do not want to release their IPs on other hardware. Make those games to fail from the start and then show the numbers on mobile and the numbers on the Switch to the investors to finally get them to shut up.
I mean, Pokemon Go is a top five all time grossing mobile game. Fire Emblem is in the top 40, and they have three more in the top 100. It’s only a failure relative to Nintendo’s typical success with first-party titles on their own console. You’re talking about games that grossed nearly $300 million in sales as total failures.
I think the problem with their mobile games minus pokemon go, is that they are very clearly marketed to the Japanese mobile market which is so different from the rest of the worlds. Japan has this thing where mobile gaming or gaming on the go in general is a huge thing. For example I play league of legends and they marketed the game in japan as something you can play on the train to work, which you absolutely can’t, and they did this because advertising it as a game you can sit at home and play for 14 hours isnt as broadly appealing over there.
You have basically two genres of Nintendo mobile games, you have the big boys and the gacha games.
The big boys would be games like Mario Run and Pokemon go, games that were clearly designed to be succesful and appeal to as many people as possible, but then you have the other ones. Animal Crossing, the mario kart one, pokemon duels, fire emblem heros and what do they all have in common? a gacha feature which does EXTREMELY well in Asain markets.
Then you have to add all that together with the fact that nintendo is about 15 years in the past and you start to understand why their mobile games don’t do to well out of japan lol.
Because they’re half baked cash grabs with a live service in mind. Mobile games as a live service only serve to fill the pockets of the game devs and the publisher.
If Nintendo made the NES and SNES emulators official and ported them to Mobile, they could charge $10 for the app and $5-20 for the games and still make money without having to scam children into stealing mom’s credit card for another shitty microtransaction
Great news. – and maybe why Apple will not buy Nintendo. But Microsoft?
Pikmin Bloom ♥️
Anyone else remember when Mario Kart Tour launched? It was free for everyone with fake online but after about 2 weeks Nintendo forced everyone to pay 10 dollars a month to play and everyone deleted it. I’ve never seen a mobile game get completely squashed like that and I think it’s part of the reason they’re about to discontinue the game. Most people tried it when it launched and didn’t look back after asked to pay 10 dollars a month.
I think Nintendo tried to approach mobiles games as something they could change completely (monthly fee instead of ads and micro transactions) but no one wanted to pay that much so they had to change Tour completely before it got popular again.
Some people will probably be surprised how much more successful Fire Emblem Heroes is than the other Nintendo mobile games. But it makes sense that it made the most money when you think about from a different perspective. Fire Emblem Heroes has a lot more in common with many other successful gatcha style game. Fate, Arknights, Granblue, Genshin, etc, the list goes on and on. The gameplay may be different, but the vibe (anime, fantasy, absurd and deep lore, loads of characters with different art and variations) is the same.
For Mario Kart Tour, the game didn’t even play like most racing games on phones. It was portrait mode only, had no gyro, and had no multiplayer. These things wouldn’t be changed for almost a year.
I’ve always believed Nintendo intentionally made their mobile games shallow as not to cut into their console releases. Like why would people buy a switch if Mario kart mobile was a comparable experience.
Also $10 for Mario Run but you cant play it without an internet connection was a terrible decision.
My conspiracy theory is that the whole reason that the Mario Kart 8 expansion exists is so they can have an excuse to port the Tour tracks to console. There’s sometimes like two of those to a pack, every pack. I need to check and see but that’s got to be like every course by now right?
I paid £10 for Mario run, and I loved it 🙂
Only thing I HATE though, is that you HAVE to be online to play it. When I’m playing a game on my phone, it’s usually because I DON’t have internet at that moment so I need something else to distract me :/
That alone was probably a significant hit against it imo. Maybe I’m a minority though 🙂
Nintendo giving much more priority to consoles is why since lot of them aren’t at their fullest potential.
FEH was the successor because it was similar to other games similar at the time.
Mario Kart Tour had bad reception at launch.
They never really wanted to participate in the mobile market. They can adapt their gameplay to the platform very well (games like Pokemon and Animal Crossing could be ported with few changes) but they don’t like free-to-play as a model, and they lose platform control.
Their whole business model is synergy between selling games and selling consoles. Games like Zelda, Mario Kart, and Pokemon sell Switches, and the Switch storefront pushes Zelda, Mario Kart, and Pokemon.
Nintendo could dominate the mobile market if they seriously tried, there’s just not enough benefit for them.
I was able to play the closed beta for mario kart tour and it was pretty fun. I don’t know what happened between Beta and launch but it just wasn’t fun with microtransactions.
I don’t think Nintendo like the concept very much and there seems to be some hesitation with using their brands in a business that many consider gambling for children.
Ultimately the IP wil always be worth more and they’re just extremely careful about that.
The thing about Super Mario Run is that they should have made the free demo you have as a separate app and it could have been better received.
They should have pushed Dragalia Lost harder.
Mobil market is extremely competitive. Square Enix releases and shut downs a new mobile game every year.
I kind of felt they were dumbed down versions of games I already had so it was a step backwards.
Nintendo adding micro transactions was the definitive nail in the coffin for me. It soiled their reputation. It was supposed to be the company that releases fully fleshed out games that work and look beautifully. This just took the facade away.
To be honest, I’m glad they didn’t catch on. If they had candy crush level success I would be worried they would stop making console games.
Because Nintendo obviously doesn’t really care about mobile games and has made those games begrudgingly. Their main product is a mobile system, they want more people there instead of in Apple or Google’s ecosystem
Have you ever played one of those “other Japanese and Chinese gacha games”?
They are full of tactics to encourage microtransactions and engagement. They make it very challenging to spend $0 and stay on a disciplined budget. There are a number of recurring techniques across the games and it’s also clear the developers have refined these techniques over the years.
I’ve tried some of the Nintendo games in your list and although they have microtransactions, they are not nearly as good at drumming up excitement on new spending targets on a regular basis and very subtly punishing players who don’t spend.
(Disclaimer: I’m not trashing on these games. I personally have played some for many years.)
Anyone who’s a fan of Mario Kart or Animal Crossing knows that the mobile games offer a shallower experience of what they’re already playing.
Fans of Fire Emblem are already shallow people. Zing.
I’m not surprised. Nintendo games aren’t really designed like mobile games. Mario run was the most Nintendo like game they made and it flopped. Just ain’t the right market.
Idk if Pokemon Masters would be considered a “nintendo mobile game” since it has the company’s name in the trademakrs. I am still shocked how a Pokemon gacha game could perform so bad. I blame it on the initial launch disaster an the lack of content that 4 years later is still an issue. I am surprised they didnt EOS that thing in the middle of its second year
Just give us NES and Gameboy games. I would happily pay for them. That is the obvious winner.
I’ve always believed they would make far more money if they released their games on other console platforms rather than mobile.
Turning beloved franchises into gacha games are usually misses.
Chibi Edelgard on a throne as Dr. Mario and Gold Dry Bowser bow to her
Turns out playing games on a cell phone without a controller sucks. Who ever could have predicted that? Also, locking out half of the potential customers for months probably doesn’t help.
I just don’t think phones are good platforms to play most games. Especially something that’s more involved.
It usually takes something more like a controller or something like the backbone. At that point just grab a switch.
I miss street pass games.
they haven’t tried hard enough, that’s it!
Nintendo has been very opened about mobile not being their priority.
For reference, Pokemon Go is over 5 billion in revenue [as of 2021](https://sensortower.com/blog/pokemon-go-five-billion-revenue).
Let the make an average Zelda game and see the magic.
I still play Super Mario Run to this very day. Ever since it originally came out years ago, it’s my go-to toilet time game
How are you surprised? Aside from Mario Run they are all free to play mobile garbage.