Nintendo’s mobile games don’t get enough credit. While Nintendo had some undeniable hits like Pokemon Go and Fire Emblem Heroes, many consider the rest of its mobile efforts to be quite weak and even somewhat disappointing for a video game company like Nintendo. While nothing quite reached the high levels of Pokémon Go in 2016, Nintendo’s mobile games are much more impressive than they get credit for.
Over the past few years, games like Pokémon: Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe build on their mobile counterparts. Then, during the September 13 Nintendo Direct, the announcement and key gimmick of Fire Emblem Engage cemented that Nintendo isn’t viewing mobile games as a mostly failed side experiment. While they may not be the most successful games out there, their DNA is making it into the Nintendo Switch’s bestselling titles.
mediocre mobile returns
Nintendo’s mobile gaming efforts began in the mid-2010s. Niantic created the AR game Pokemon Go, which became increasingly successful in 2016. In six years, the game has generated approximately 678 million installs and players have spent $6 billion, according to data from Sensor Tower.
While working with Niantic proved profitable for The Pokémon Company, Nintendo partnered with DeNA for most of its early mobile games. Unfortunately, none of these reached the heights that analysts and Nintendo were expecting. Super Mario Run was a massive hit at launch, but failed to maintain much interest and consistent revenue, so it was considered a disappointment by Nintendo.
Meanwhile, other games like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Mario Kart Tour, Dr. Mario World, and Dragalia Lost launched, and while they still made a lot of money for Nintendo, most couldn’t match the success of the most popular mobile Could. Topic. The biggest exception to this is Fire Emblem Heroes, a gacha game where players can summon classic Fire Emblem characters. According to Sensor Tower, player spending alone was over $1 billion as of June 2022 and it is Nintendo’s “flagship title on the[mobile}platform”[mobile}platform”accordingtoSensorTower[मोबाइल}प्लेटफॉर्मपरप्रमुखशीर्षक”है।[mobile}platform”accordingtoSensorTower
More recently, Nintendo tried to recapture the success of Pokémon GO with Niantic’s Pikmin Bloom, though that game reportedly disappointed as well. Overall, it’s understandable why some people would be surprised to see only a few surefire mobile hits from a company with Nintendo’s pedigree and consider it a side venture that never realized its full potential. However, if you look closely at the console games in these series that Nintendo has introduced, it is not ignoring everything it has learned when making mobile games.
amazing effect of mobile
Nintendo has an excellent ability to find the strongest elements of an idea, flesh them out, and then expand on them to create something uniquely memorable. We’ve seen it do this repeatedly with later entries in its flagship series, but upon closer inspection it’s a mentality it’s applied to its mobile games.
As of 2018, Pokémon: Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee recognized the charm of not needing to battle to catch a Pokémon, and incorporated it into the traditional RPG experience. Recently, items and mechanics like gardening and cooking from Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp made their way into Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which repurposes the best tracks and assets from Mario Kart Tour into its live Was able to revive the service offering.
Fire Emblem Engage – Announcement Trailer – Nintendo Switch
The legacy of Nintendo’s mobile games can also be felt at September 13’s Nintendo Direct. The first announcement of the showcase was Fire Emblem Engage, a turn-based strategy game where the main gimmick is being able to summon classic Fire Emblem characters with a ring. While it doesn’t seem like Fire Emblem Engage has gone completely waste, it’s clear that Nintendo has recognized how much people love collecting and using classic Fire Emblem characters in a new adventure, So the developers drew on and expanded on that idea for Fire Emblem Engage.
Before the announcement of Pikmin 4, Shigeru Miyamoto also took a long time to reveal Pikmin Bloom. Although we don’t know much about Pikmin 4’s gameplay, Nintendo may find some aspects of that game’s exploratory experience, weekly challenges, or something else I can’t even think of in the next mainline game refresh. I am staying. The next time Nintendo decides to make a 2D Mario game, the same could happen with Super Mario Run.
While watching a demonstration of Fire Emblem Engage during the latest Nintendo Direct, it became clear that Nintendo’s mobile games have quietly become the dominant force among the company’s console games. Nintendo gradually extracted the best ideas from them and brought them to the Switch game without additional monetization. While the future is unclear for Nintendo’s seemingly stalled mobile push, I’m hopeful that the company can still find a place for its games on mobile, using the platform as a platform to experiment with its beloved series. Can use.
