Nintendo hasn’t had as many runaway successes in the mobile game market as one might expect (or Nintendo themselves might have wanted), but it seems like that won’t make them resort to the kind of abusive and exploitative monetization practices that other mobile game companies so frequently rely on.
How do we know this? Because CyberAgent, the parent company for Cygames, who partnered with Nintendo on the mobile game Dragalia Lost, recently complained that their revenues from that game are not as high as they could be—because Nintendo stops them from excessive monetization practices, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
“Nintendo is not interested in making a large amount of revenue from a single smartphone game,” one CyberAgent official reportedly said. “If we managed the game alone, we would have made a lot more.”
Apparently, a lot of this comes from Nintendo wanting to protect its family friendly brand (which would be hard to do if kids could suddenly spend a few thousand bucks on their parents’ credit card in one of their mobile games). Nintendo has previously also spoken out against exploitation of players and bottom-of-the-barrel pricing, so this would line up with that too.
Interestingly enough, Dragalia Lost has done incredibly well regardless—so you have to wonder exactly how much money Cygames was hoping to make from it if they’re still not satisfied.