Nintendo is looking to increase the profitability of its mobile games after the disappointing financial performance of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp [Free] and lackluster standing compared to the Nintendo Switch and 3DS business. Mobile games brought in 29.1 billion yen in income in 2017, but this was compared to 170 billion yen for the 3DS and 595 billion yen from the Nintendo Switch. Japanese Nintendo translated an interview with Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima, where he says:
Nikkei: How are you looking at the profitability in the business for smartphones"
Kimishima: We?ve published Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and more, but we still haven?t raised them profit-wise. From here on we want to work on various things like upgrading the insides of them.
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Right now, Nintendo is learning the hard way that they might need to utilize traditional free-to-play models to a greater degree.
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is a flop, only in the top 100 grossing presently in Japan, with the game in the mid-hundreds in the US grossing charts according to App Annie. Similarly, Miitomo [Free], the first Nintendo title, is officially shutting down soon.
What has been a success for Nintendo" Fire Emblem Heroes [Free]. That title continues to do well for Nintendo, making frequent spikes in the top-ten in the US, and performing similarly in the lucrative Japanese market. It uses a far more traditional mobile gaming business model, ...