Nintendo Is Reportedly Moving Away from Mobile Games

Nintendo is said to be distancing itself from the development of mobile games according to recent reports about the company's plans for mobile and Nintendo Switch releases or the lack thereof. Bloomberg reported that Nintendo's president Shuntaro Furukawa said the company is "not necessarily" looking into releasing many new apps for mobile devices. Citing numbers from Sensor Tower, graphics showed Nintendo's games trailing far behind the reported revenues for other popular mobile games like Fortnite and Tencent's Honor of Kings hit. The report continued to suggest that Nintendo has instead decided to focus more on the Switch's catalog of games.

Furukawa reportedly shared comments in May that suggested we shouldn't expect quite as much a focus on mobile games from Nintendo moving forward.

"We are not necessarily looking to continue releasing many new applications for the mobile market," Furukawa said, according to Bloomberg.

Other insights from individuals like Tokyo game consultant Serkan Toto said "Nintendo's mobile pipeline is empty" following the release of Mario Kart Tour in Fall 2019.

"In a sense, Nintendo's enormous success on console reduced the need and the pressure to put resources into mobile," Toto said.

With how popular the Switch has been lately, especially with the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the idea then is that Nintendo will be refocusing its efforts back on the console releases. The president of Nintendo's DeNA Co. mobile partner, Isao Moriyasu, also said not to expect any new games from the company until the end of the fiscal year.

We've seen several mobile games from Nintendo released throughout the past few years as well as different sentiments from Nintendo on how it'd approach those games. Back in 2017 with games like Fire Emblem Heroes already out on the market, it was said that Nintendo wanted to focus more on its mobile titles. Then in 2018, it was reported that Nintendo wasn't satisfied with its mobile releases since they hadn't reached a "satisfactory profit point" yet. The goal then was to have that area of Nintendo's business expanded to prop up its mobile releases more. We've seen some big releases since then like the Mario Kart Tour game mentioned above that became Nintendo's biggest mobile release ever, but when you look at the numbers comparing Nintendo's mobile games to established ones that have made huge impacts around the world, the numbers are quite different.

Nintendo's next big Switch game in the works is the new Paper Mario: The Origami King game planned for July 17th.