Super Mario Run came to mobile in 2016, the year that marked the beginning of a major initiative by Nintendo to grow in the mobile market. The company planned to release 2 to 3 games for these platforms per year. However, it appears that its strategy has recently changed.
According to a recent report, Nintendo will be stepping away from the mobile games market. Along with various partners, the company has developed various games for iOS and Android, but the results have not met expectations in all cases. Takahashi Mochizuki, a journalist of Bloomberg, reports that Nintendo will withdraw from mobile games due to the poor results it has reported with its most recent releases.
Shuntaro Furukawa, president of Nintendo, made a change in its strategy in May, the month he declared that they were not necessarily going to release many more mobile games. One of his most recent releases was the Mario Kart Tour.
Mochizuki notes that this is due in part to the great success of some Nintendo Switch games, most notably Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Analysts believe that the popularity of the hybrid console diminished Nintendo’s interest in creating and launching more mobile games.
Nintendo’s mobile games generated $1,000 million in revenue earlier this year. For this reason, a few months ago the company assured that it was preparing more releases for these platforms. At the time of this writing, it is not known for sure if Nintendo already has an extra mobile game ready, as the report only states that the company will not bet on the market in the future.
Everything indicates that Nintendo’s strategy is to keep active the games for iOS and Android already available. Despite the fact that the profits of said games have increased year by year, the total numbers are not close to the goals originally established.
Analyst Serkan Toto is convinced that there will be new mobile games from Nintendo. However, he notes that these will be minor projects aimed to “appease shareholders.”
