Nintendo mobile games
, a Japanese home and handheld video game console manufacturer and game developer, has traditionally focused on games that utilize unique elements of its consoles. However, in the early 2010s, the company saw several successive fiscal quarters where they were running at an operating loss. This financial turmoil prompted a shift in strategy to enter the mobile gaming market with the aid of mobile platform development partner DeNA, using mobile titles as a marketing tool to entice that audience into purchasing Nintendo's dedicated video game hardware.
Several of these titles would enter the top-downloaded games list on the iOS App Store and Google Play stores, earning over in total revenue by 2020.
History
Prior to 2015
Leading into the 2010s, Nintendo principally offered its portable console, the Nintendo DS, and its home console, the Wii; along with several internally-developed titles in several major video game franchises, such as Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda, which would release exclusively on their hardware. Driven by novel hardware concepts such as the dual-screen nature of the DS line and the motion Wii Remote, both systems had become Nintendo's best-selling handheld and home consoles by the end of 2009. Entering the new decade, Nintendo resolved to maintain this strategy and the overall "dedicated hardware and software" business model with the successor devices to these consoles, the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, respectively.The 2010s saw the growth of mobile gaming with wide adoption of smartphones and tablet computers. By 2012, the mobile gaming market was estimated to be worth, compared to the overall video game industry's net value of, and expected to be the largest driver of growth in the video game market over the next several years, according to research firm Newzoo.
As mobile gaming grew, Nintendo was criticized for not taking risks in this area, prompted when the valuation of GungHo Online Entertainment, the publishers of the financially successful Puzzle & Dragons, exceeded that of Nintendo's in June 2013. These concerns were also compounded by lower-than-projected sales numbers for the aforementioned Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, which had caused Nintendo's stock price to drop. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal during E3 2013, Nintendo global president Satoru Iwata addressed the allure of developing for the mobile market, saying he had opted to not take Nintendo in that direction, focusing instead on providing compelling games that would drive their hardware sales, retaining their unique approach. Iwata believed that while they could easily obtain short-term gains by addressing the mobile market, "20 years down the line, we may look back at the decision not to supply Nintendo games to smartphones and think that is the reason why the company is still here." Previously, Iwata had also asserted that "Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo" if they started development for mobile games. These sentiments were later echoed by Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé saying "When the consumer wants to play Mario, Zelda, and Pokémon, they have to purchase our hardware to do so. And that preserves our overall financial model."
In January 2014, when issuing a lowering of its financial forecast for the fiscal year due to continued underperformance, Iwata expressed a more open attitude towards the mobile market, saying "Given the expansion of smart devices, we are naturally studying how smart devices can be used to grow the game-player business," but that "It's not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone." Later that year, Iwata went further by stating "... I believe that the era has ended when people play all kinds of games only on dedicated gaming systems."
This coincided with The Pokémon Company, a joint venture company created to manage the Pokémon brand separately from Nintendo's other intellectual property, beginning work with third-party developers to create games for smartphones and tablets, initially with Pokémon TCG Online released in September 2014.
2015–2020
Following the end of the 2014 fiscal year, Iwata, Tatsumi Kimishima, Genyo Takeda, and Shigeru Miyamoto crafted a new strategy for Nintendo to bring them back into profitability, which included approaching the mobile market, creating new hardware, and "maximizing intellectual property"For the mobile gaming area, Iwata initiated discussions with DeNA, a large Japanese mobile platform developer and provider. In March 2015, Nintendo and DeNA announced a partnership to jointly develop at least five mobile game titles, with one title planned to be released by the end of that year. Part of this deal including Nintendo acquiring 10% of DeNA's stock, while DeNA obtained about 1.24% of Nintendo's. When elaborating on the partnership, Iwata said that Nintendo had found a way with DeNA to bring its franchises to mobile devices that took advantage of unique control methods offered by these devices, and stated their belief that their mobile effort will "become an opportunity for the great number of people around the world who own smart devices—but do not have interest in dedicated video game hardware—to be interested in Nintendo IP and eventually to become fans of our dedicated game systems." To prevent speculation that the company would be ceasing hardware development, Nintendo also announced an upcoming console under the codename "NX" during the conference.
At the time of announcement, Nintendo had not committed to whether their mobile games would be free-to-play or require a single up-front cost, but Iwata did assure that they would stay to payment schemes that parents would be comfortable with for letting their children play. Iwata also said that Nintendo would be able to avoid issues that other mobile developers had, where their success usually rested on one key game; Nintendo instead can take advantage of several of their franchises and develop a range of games.
Iwata died from health complications in July 2015, and Kimishima was named Nintendo's new president. Kimishima continued to have Nintendo follow the mobile approach that Iwata had set forward, considering it a core pillar of Nintendo's strategy. The company's first two mobile titles as part of the DeNA partnership would release in 2016, being Miitomo and Super Mario Run, followed by Fire Emblem Heroes in 2017. In statements to investors made in November 2017, Kimishima acknowledged Nintendo was still adapting to mobile, pointing to missed expectations with Super Mario Run, which utilized an up-front cost as opposed to free-to-play model, stating:
Nintendo has a large stock of valuable IP characters and has developed many games. We cannot, however, simply port our existing games and IP to smart-device applications. A lot of thought is going into what kind of games for smart devices will further our business and how we can continue to foster good relationships with our existing dedicated video game platform business. Among the various ideas, a primary concern is enabling our consumers to play on not only smart devices, but also our dedicated video game systems. We want to build up the smart-device business as a core pillar of Nintendoʼs various businesses, but we have not yet reached that level. Nintendo is not at a stage where we can consider becoming a smart-device platform developer.
Near the end of calendar year 2017, Nintendo was reportedly in talks with additional mobile platform providers including GungHo to expand their mobile game offerings, as well as extending their current DeNA deal, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Upon announcement of the jointly developed and operated title Dragalia Lost in April 2018, Nintendo also announced it had acquired about a 5% stake in Japanese mobile game developer Cygames. Around the same time, Kimishima announced he was stepping down as Nintendo's president, to be replaced by Shuntaro Furukawa. Furukawa stated that he planned to continue Nintendo's drive into mobile games towards being a per year revenue source for the company, and try to create more games that were as successful as Pokémon Go.
2020–present
Bloomberg News reported in June 2020 that Nintendo was unlikely to further pursue major efforts on the mobile market. While they still would publish and develop games for it and maintain the current ones already available, they would focus less on the mobile market as the success of the Nintendo Switch console coupled with the existing mobile games allowed the company to sustain itself. Bloomberg attributed this to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused players to move away from Nintendo's mobile games to other games and failing to reach the projected revenue targets estimated in 2018; Sensor Tower reported double-digit drops in player counts in games like Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes, while the company's console titles such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons saw massive sales which helped drive Nintendo's profits to a twelve-year high. At a shareholders' meeting the same month, Furukawa stated that there were no new plans for games in the mobile area, though the business still remains important to the company for different reasons outside of revenue including exposure of the brand of Nintendo, its franchises and the establishment of Nintendo accounts into customers.In March 2021, Nintendo and Niantic announced a partnership to create other mobile games based in Nintendo IP for AR, similar to Pokémon Go. Niantic's Pikmin Bloom was released at the end of 2021.
Nintendo quietly shuttered Dr. Mario World in 2021 and Dragalia Lost in 2022, as well as ended support for Miitomo. An Axios report suggested that these were motivated by the low contribution of these titles to Nintendo's financials, as the company had reported over $4.5 billion in revenue from sales of the Switch and its games between April and September 2022, but only $169 million from its mobile games. In 2023, Miyamoto announced that future Mario games would not be mobile, citing that Nintendo's focus is on its hardware and play experiences that integrate with that hardware. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp would end service in 2024, being replaced with a paid offline version with no microtransactions.
In February 2025, Furukawa would reaffirm Nintendo's commitment to mobile games during an investor Q&A session, stating that the company was "continuing to develop new game applications" and that mobile content remains an important element in generating interest for their core business alongside other initiatives such as theme parks and feature films. Later that year, the company would release Hey, Mario!, an app geared towards young children for both mobile device and Nintendo consoles, and Fire Emblem Shadows, a social deduction game and the second mobile spin-off in the Fire Emblem series.