Gaming

Nintendo has made $1 billion from mobile games so far


Fire Emblem Heroes – it’s certainly been a hero to Nintendo’s accountants (pic: Nintendo)

The allure of microtransactions and gacha mechanics has paid off for Nintendo, as Fire Emblem Heroes makes half a billion on its own.

When Nintendo first announced they were going to make mobile games, back in the darkest days of the Wii U’s failure, it seemed almost like the company was giving up.

But then a strange thing happened: the Nintendo Switch was a huge success and the mobile games weren’t. Or at least it seemed that way at first.

Social app Miitomo only lasted a couple of years before being shut down and Super Mario Run was not the hit that was expected, with mobile gamers complaining that it was too expensive and insisting that microtransactions and free-to-play was fairer.

Nintendo listened and the third game was Fire Emblem Heroes, which is filled to the brim with gacha mechanics and microtransactions of the sort that Nintendo will be vilified for if it ever introduced into its console games.

But the mobile market, as Nintendo has learned, is very different, and Fire Emblem Heroes has been a huge hit – particularly in Japan – and has generated $656 million (£504m) in revenues since its launch in 2017.

According to data from Sensor Tower, Nintendo has made $1.08 billion (£830m) from its mobile apps so far (not including Miitomo or Pokémon – which is handled by The Pokémon Company) with 452 million downloads across all six apps.

Mobile gamers can’t resist microtransactions (pic: Sensor Tower)

But 61% of that revenue has come just from Fire Emblem Heroes, with the game making an average of £31.50 from every person that downloads the app.

That is in direct contrast to Super Mario Run, which still holds the record for the most downloaded Nintendo app, at 244 million, but because it has no in-app purchases only made £20 million in its first year.

Fire Emblem Heroes has only been downloaded 18 million times, just 4% of the total number of Nintendo mobile app downloads, and yet thanks to whales trying to collect all the different characters it’s by far the most profitable.

And that is why games companies love microtransactions.

Although Fire Emblem Heroes has certainly worked out the success of Nintendo’s other apps has been highly variable, with Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp only proving to be a minor hit and Dr. Mario World an outright flop.

Mario Kart Tour though, which also has a gacha model that many console gamers would find offensive, looks to be on course to be another major success, following its launch last September.

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