At the same time as the announcement of the Nintendo Switch, then only known by its codename NX, Nintendo also announced plans to expand their business model to [mobile devices](https://time.com/3748920/nintendo-mobile-games/), with DeNA being their partner in this venture. Their first mobile effort was Miitomo, released in March 2016, and it was a free social networking app that utilized Mii characters. At one point the game had over 1 million active users, but that number eventually waned and the app would ultimately be discontinued after two years. Following that was Super Mario Run, released later that year, and I’ll be honest I don’t know that much about it other than it’s an endless runner and it has a mandatory $10 price tag.
Shortly after the release of Miitomo, Nintendo also announced that [Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing were coming to mobile devices](https://www.polygon.com/2016/4/27/11516670/fire-emblem-animal-crossing-for-mobile-ios-android-nintendo), both of which would release the following year. Fire Emblem Heroes was released in early 2017 and reverted to the free-to-play gacha system that many Japanese publishers were adopting in the mobile space. Plus there’s a ton of fanservice costumes for people who are into that. You’re probably gonna be surprised at how well it’s doing financially, if you weren’t already. It is by far Nintendo’s most successful mobile game to date, [generating more than $656 million since launch and growing](https://sensortower.com/blog/nintendo-revenue-one-billion). Personally I enjoy playing it in my spare time; it brought a lot of Japan-exclusive FE characters to the West with newly-recorded voices, and it’s still getting new characters and story content to this day. It even got some music in Smash Ultimate to my surprise.
Animal Crossing Pocket Camp was released in late 2017 and was a decent money maker, but then New Horizons came out and Nintendo decided to ease up on mobile games as a result. The last three games are whatever in my opinion. Dragalia Lost released in 2018 and featured a bunch of cool crossover promotions, such as Fire Emblem, Persona 5, and Mega Man, so there’s that. The other two, Dr. Mario World and Mario Kart Tour, released in 2019 and I know nothing about them except that they exist. A new Pikmin mobile game co-developed with Niantic is also scheduled for this year, but we don’t know a single thing about it. RIP Dr. Mario World though…