In the mobile realm, Nintendo has two big hits- Pokemon GO, which it has minimal stakes in, and Fire Emblem Heroes. The other two of its offerings so far have underperformed (Super Mario Run and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp). The result of this is that Nintendo company president Tatsumi Kimishima has admitted that the performance of Nintendo’s mobile initiatives has not yet reached a satisfactory level of profits.
“The efforts we have made to date have yielded certain responses to our goal of expanding the number of people who have access to Nintendo IP,” said Kimishima in Nintendo’s presentation to its investors. “Even so, we have not reached a satisfactory profit point yet, so our goal is to further expand the scale of this business to develop it into one of the pillars of revenue.”
Nintendo’s next game for mobile devices is Mario Kart Tour– if ever there was a Nintendo game that could perform beyond expectations on mobiles, it’s this one, assuming it is monetized well. How Nintendo chooses to handle that remains to be seen- hopefully it will be a bigger success for them than something like Animal Crossing.