It wasn’t long ago that we have seen reports going up online regarding Nintendo’s loss of love over the smartphone mobile division. In the past report from Bloomberg who used sources who claimed that Nintendo will soon be exiting out of the mobile division after the underwhelming sales that their applications brought after their release. This was also likely due to the push to refrain from having too many purchase options for players to make use of thanks to the controversy over loot boxes. When news broke, most started to spread the report made by the publication, however, it looks like we are now getting a conflicting statement from Nintendo itself.
Nintendo has pushed out several games into the market featuring its IP. We’ve seen Super Mario Run, Mario Kart Tour, to Animal Crossing: Pocket Edition. With that said, these games apparently just don’t bring in a ton of profit for Nintendo to really justify the medium as a good revenue source for the company. With that said, it does offer a great way to bring in new consumers to Nintendo and that is enough to keep the production running for other video game apps.
During a Q&A segment at Nintendo’s 80th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, the president of the company, Shuntaro Furukawa, had stated that the applications market was not a big driving business for revenue but the company is seeing a rise in certain demographics. For instance, with these games, there seems to be an increase in different age groups and genders that are creating accounts on Nintendo. Likewise, apps like Animal Crossing: Pocket Edition, not only allowed veteran fans to enjoy a new Animal Crossing game on their smartphone, but it brought in plenty of newcomers to the IP that later went out and purchased a Nintendo Switch unit along with the latest entry to the franchise, Animal Crossing: New Horizon.
It seems that while the apps won’t bring out a massive profit for Nintendo, the apps are useful enough to keep the business going and we’re likely going to see plenty more IPs get transformed into a mobile game through the likes of the development studio, DeNA.
