Nintendo is very happy with its mobile arm, completely disrespects Miitomo

‘We have six applications’

Remember Miitomo? Hell, remember Miis, and Miiverse/Swapnote? While Nintendo continues to reference the little-avatars-on-life-support every so often (like ancillary Smash characters or Mario Kart 8 racers) they’re nearly dead and buried, and we get another reminder of why in today’s financial briefing document.

Nintendo qualifies their mobile business by stating that they have “six applications,” in which it lists Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Dragalia Lost, and the upcoming Dr. Mario World (early summer 2019) and Mario Kart Tour (summer 2019). Given that Miitomo was discontinued last year it makes perfect sense not to mention it in the active roundup, but no mention at all is saddening, especially given that it kicked off their mobile strategy and everyone loved it for a hot minute.

But that’s the sordid past and those six golden gooses are the future. Nintendo says that “overall revenue from the mobile business has expanded compared to the previous fiscal year” and they’re ready to keep that gravy train running. This initiative will kick off with a May 21 beta for Mario Kart Tour, where we’ll likely see the monetization strategy, yell at it, and wait for Nintendo to adjust it just enough where they can make money and people won’t hate it. Ah, videogames in 2019.

Nintendo notes that going forward, they will “leverage the ubiquity of mobile devices to expand the number of people who have access to Nintendo IP through multiple applications like these.” In other words: they’re doubling down on mobile.

Now will all of those games be gatcha-gamble-fests? I hope not! I spoke to the Fire Emblem Heroes team a few months ago and they noted that each game is different, so it wasn’t a set in stone thing. I can’t see that strategy working out for Dr. Mario or Mario Kart, so it’ll be interesting to see just how far Nintendo pushes their strategy.

Financial Results Briefing [Nintendo]