Mobile games has been a staple of gaming culture since the launch of the iPhone and its revolutionary App Store in July 2008. The company famously stayed neutral on the mobile front for a good long while. Then-Nintendo president Satoru Iwata even said [if they made mobile games, “they would cease to be Nintendo”](https://andriasang.com/comy5c/), acknowledging their short-term profit gains but ultimately favoriting their long-term strength as a competitive brand. But as the Wii U’s failure was biting them right in the ass, Nintendo and Iwata felt it was necessary to finally break into the mobile gaming market.
In March of 2015, Nintendo announced they were working on their next big hardware platform: the Nintendo Switch. And at that same meeting [they announced their intentions on developing and releasing mobile games](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/17/nintendo-new-gaming-hardware-platform-codenamed-nx) starting the following year, under a partnership of mobile developer DeNA. And at that reveal, they said that nothing was off the table when it comes to their IP. And shortly after they released their first app, being Miitomo, they announced that [Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing were coming to mobile as well](https://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2016/April/Nintendo-provides-updates-on-mobile-NX-and-The-Legend-of-Zelda-along-with-annual-earnings-1102529.html). A few years later and suddenly we have the Switch as well as several more mobile games. Let’s run through each of them real quick, not counting the Pokemon ones:
**Miitomo:** Released in March 2016, this was less of a game and more of a social experiment. It was a completely free download where you drop your Mii into a room, ask it questions, give them clothes, and just chill. I don’t know how to describe it other than it was basically a super lite version of Tomadachi Life for 3DS. Within its first two months the app had 10 million users, but it fell off hard and Nintendo discontinued it in May 2018.
**Super Mario Run:** Nintendo’s first true mobile game was released in December 2016 and was a curious start for the platform. It was an auto runner that had a few dozen levels available to play through, but only after you pay the flat $10 price tag Nintendo put on it. I think this was what turned a lot of people off about the game, but there weren’t a lot of other MTXs from what I could gather. As of this writing, the game has grossed around $87 million and received several title updates since launch, including plenty of new playable characters.
**Fire Emblem Heroes:** It’s almost hard to believe that the Fire Emblem franchise was dying a little over a decade ago, and now it’s become one of Nintendo’s premiere franchises alongside Mario and Kirby. This game launched in February 2017 and was immediately a runaway success, generating $3 million in its first day and currently boasting an astounding $983 million in revenue. And it did so by doing what many other Japanese companies were doing on mobile at the time: gacha mechanics. And with Fire Emblem Engage out now to cross-promote the hell out of, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
**Animal Crossing Pocket Camp:** The last true mainline Animal Crossing game was back in 2013, and fans had to hold themselves over with spinoffs and this game until New Horizons finally arrived. Pocket Camp released in November 2017 and basically condensed a lot of the series’s trademark busywork and villagers into a pocketable format. You could purchase fortune cookies with real money, but otherwise MTXs were largely limited to building furniture faster. It is worth noting that both this and Fire Emblem Heroes got subscription passes as well, but you can still play without them. As of now Pocket Camp has grossed $276 million, and I’m willing to bet a good chunk of that was due to the popularity of New Horizons.
**Dragalia Lost:** This was Nintendo’s first new IP on mobile, being codeveloped with Cygames of Granblue Fantasy game. This was an action RPG set in a world filled with dragons, and you can collect and battle with hundreds of them of different rarities in classic gacha game style. There were even special collaboration events with Mega Man, Persona 5, and even Fire Emblem Heroes itself. And just like that game this too was a runaway success, generating $167 million over the course of four years before finally being discontinued in November of last year. Here’s hoping Nintendo finds some way to salvage the IP, because it does have a lot of fans.
**Dr. Mario World:** The latest in the longrunning puzzle game series debuted in July 2019 and brought with it the opportunity to make any Mario character a doctor. You progress through levels and clear challenges in a style eerily reminiscent of Candy Crush; when you lose a level you could wait a certain amount of time or pay to get more plays. But on top of that, there’s a gacha system in which you could recruit various doctors and assistants to make the job easier. The game debuted with tepid responses and generated only $14 million in revenue before being unceremoniously shut down in October 2021.
**Mario Kart Tour:** The world’s biggest multiplayer franchise finally came to mobile in September 2019 and saw 10 million downloads on its first day. Tour saw the return of fan favorite characters like Diddy Kong and Funky Kong, as well as newcomers like Pauline and Nabbit. But while there were some neat ideas that Tour brought to the table like driving courses backwards, all of that was brought down hard by the gacha machine. The game also didn’t launch with multiplayer or Luigi. Regardless it still generated around $270 million over the past three and a half years, and the city tracks are now being repurposed as paid DLC for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, so that’s something.
**Pikmin Bloom:** This was released on the Pikmin franchise’s 20th anniversary and was codeveloped with Niantic, the studio who also gave us Pokemon Go. This one is pretty chill with its monetization compared to Nintendo’s other offerings, but I haven’t played it or know enough about it to comment. No profits were ever released to the public, but this game did get a spotlight in that Nintendo Direct where they finally showed off Pikmin 4. Maybe it’ll get a boost when that game comes out this July.
by Asad_Farooqui
2 Comments
Miitomo was far from a lite version of Tomodachi Life, I was so disappointed that outside the art style and surface level customization it played nothing like Tomodachi Life
It was just a quirky text to speech meme generator with light online sharing that lost its quirkiness after a day or two
Fun fact: Pokemon Go was the last game that Iwata greenlit. On his deathbed, he was giving the team pointers and suggestions as to what Pokemon Go should do (and what it should have).