Some time ago, the mobile game " Dragalia " jointly developed and operated by Nintendo and Cygames suddenly issued an official announcement. The content is that the game will be closed after the game plot is completed in July. .
mobile game server closure is actually not a big deal, but in Xiaofaâs view, this may indicate that Nintendo is gradually withdrawing from the field of mobile games.
A large number of friends may have a question in their minds: "What? Doesn't Nintendo make console and handheld games? Where did it come from mobile games?"
Indeed, at the beginning of 2010, various game manufacturers were moving towards mobile games. As the market develops, only Nintendo seems completely uninterested in this business.
In 2011, the then president Satoru Iwata said bluntly in an interview: " We didn't consider it at all. If we did that, Nintendo would no longer be Nintendo. "
At that time, players thought that Nintendo was properly The "conscience of the industry" has guarded the last pure land of the game.
In fact, there were a lot of objections within Nintendo at that time. After all, everyone could see how much money mobile games made, but Iwata naturally had the confidence to dare to say this.
In the more than ten years since he was the president, he has led the development of best-selling models such as NDS and Wii. He has also participated in the production of well-known IP games such as Zelda, Super Mario, and Animal Crossing. He is known in the industry as a "genius programmer." ".
Relying on Satoru Iwataâs philosophy of âdeveloping simple and fun gamesâ, Nintendo focused on both hardware and software, and achieved very good results in the console war with Microsoft and Sony .
You must know that the NDS is Nintendo's best-selling game device, with 150 million units sold worldwide!
019 data âź
Whatâs wrong with making money from mobile games? I can still make money without making mobile games!
Unfortunately, reality hit the face quickly and painfully. After this, Nintendo seemed to be poisoned. The sales of the two new models, 3DS and Wii U, suffered a waterloo, and the software was squeezed and impacted by a large number of mobile games.
The sales of Wii U were far less than expected, and the losses caused directly hindered Nintendo. The financial reports in those years were terrible.
Faced with the company's consecutive losses and falling stock prices, Iwata finally gave up his persistence. announced in 2015 that it would focus its business on mobile games.
Nintendo and mobile service provider DeNA reached an equity swap âź
But the reality is cruel. Before this talented programmer could show his talents in the field of mobile games, cholangiocarcinoma took his life.
Then a 65-year-old man named Kimijima Tatsumi hurriedly took over the position of president. It was quite tragic that "the late emperor collapsed before he started his business."
According to his age, Kimijima Tatsumi could have applied for retirement long ago, but now that Nintendo is leaderless, this key veteran employee still stepped forward resolutely to take on the important responsibility.
And he did not live up to the company's expectations of him. During the period when Kimishima Tatsumi served as president, Nintendo relied on the launch of Nintendo Switch and "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" and "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Edition" and other classics The game stabilized the chaotic situation.
If Satoru Iwata is the "Founding King" of Nintendo in the 21st century, then Tatsuki Kimishima is the "Lord of ZTE".
More importantly, Kimishima Tatsumi did not forget to realize Satoru Iwataâs mobile game blueprint.
In 2016, Nintendo announced that it would develop the two IPs "Animal Crossing" and "Fire Emblem" into mobile games.
also launched two mobile games in the same year, "Miitomo" and " Super Mario Run ".
As Lao Ren's first mobile game, "Miitomo" focuses on entertainment and social interaction, and the character design also follows the Mii (Nintendo's virtual character service) character style. The gameplay of
is very simple. After players design their own character, they need to answer questions raised by their character every time they log in, gradually enriching the character's personality.
For example, after it asked me "What is my favorite thing to eat?", I answered chicken legs.
After that, if my friends come to interact with my character, they can choose the corresponding question and then know the answer.
To put it bluntly, this is a "Truth or Dare" game with an automatic answer function, but the questions are all set by the system, and the players enter the answers in advance.
"Miitomo" is a game where you can download free props for a fee. However, Nintendo did not design too many krypton gold points in this game. Even if you want to buy some virtual clothes, players can't spend much money.
"Super Mario Run" is a buyout parkour game. You can unlock all levels with one payment. It is also full of Nintendo flavor: casual and suitable for all ages.
Both games had high downloads when they were launched, but their subsequent fates were completely different.
"Super Mario Run" exceeded 40 million downloads within 4 days of its release, setting a record for the highest downloads in the AppStore at that time.
has brought Nintendo 76 million US dollars in revenue so far, and ranks first among the "25 best Japanese mobile games in the eyes of foreigners".
But "Miitomo" began to lose a large number of users a few months after it was launched, and it announced that it would cease service two years later in 2018.
I personally think the reason for its failure is that it failed to capture the core of social mobile games - online interaction, which is very important for players.
After all, the questions automatically generated by the system are limited, and the gameplay itself is too simple and can easily make players bored.
These two games are actually just Nintendo's test works, but the success of "Super Mario Run" gave Kimijima Tatsumi great confidence.
He said at the end of 2016 that Nintendo has regarded the mobile game business as the "third pillar" and plans to launch 2-3 mobile games every year in the future.
"Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp", which was launched in 2017, also contains blind box elements, which is the only gold point in the entire game.
In the same year, "Fire Emblem: Heroes", which had been delayed for several months, was officially launched.
"Fire Emblem: Heroes" is Nintendo's first "Krypton Gold Card Drawing" game. The money-making ability of this type of game is not comparable to those of previous casual and buyout games.
The revenue of "Fire Emblem: Heroes" reached US$295 million in the first year of its launch, and US$959 million in five years of launch, making it Nintendo's most profitable mobile game.
Maybe you would say 2017âs Pokemon GO! ăDidnât they all make billions of dollars? Why doesn't it count?
In fact, Nintendo only authorized Niantic, and the operation has nothing to do with it, so the money was basically earned by Niantic.
But according to common sense, if it is an ordinary game company, after tasting the benefits, it will definitely continue to make krypton gold mobile games.
But Nintendo is different.
In 2018, after Tatsuki Kimishima stabilized Nintendo's situation, he handed over the position of president to Shuntaro Furukawa.
Generally, when a new president takes office, he will definitely want to make some achievements to prove himself. For Shuntaro Furukawa, the mobile game business is actually a good opportunity.
The subsequent "Dr. Mario World" and " Mario Kart " have very few krypton gold elements. Just changing skins and decorations are all "non-essential krypton gold".
Among the series of mobile games he launched after taking office, only "Dragalia Lost" mentioned at the beginning is a special case.
is Nintendoâs only original IP in the field of mobile games, and it is also their second pure gold-based card-drawing mobile game.
Although its income is not as high as "Fire Emblem: Heroes", it has also ranked second for a long time.
It wasnât until the NS version of âAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsâ became popular on mobile games that its revenue was surpassed by âAnimal Crossing: Pocket Campâ.
In terms of the operation of "Dragalia Lost", we can actually see Nintendo's attitude towards the mobile game business.
"Dragalia Lost" is a joint product between Nintendo and the mobile game giant Cygames. The operation is mainly handled by Cygames.
At the beginning, the card drawing system of "Dragalia Lost" was actually very confusing.
Because if you want to improve your combat effectiveness in the game, you need four things: "characters, dragons, dragon symbols, and weapons." Among them, except for weapons, you need to obtain them through drawing cards.
General mobile games will separate these items into three pools, allowing players to draw cards to strengthen them in a targeted manner.
There is only one card pool in "Dragalia Lost", which mixes all three types of items together, and is called the "three-in-one poison pool".
Just like I want to go to the gashapon machine to twist a few "PokĂŠmon" toys, but the developer has added "Super Mario" and "Animal Crossing" to this gashapon machine. . .
This kind of operation means that the playerâs krypton gold cost is infinitely increased, which is almost a bottomless pit, causing players to complain.
However, this is also what mobile game manufacturers have always done - using various tricks to increase revenue.
This is especially true for the holiday limited card pool âź
It is said that this way it will make more money, and Nintendo can also get more money. This should be a satisfactory result for both companies.
But in the end, Nintendo couldnât stand it any longer, and proactively asked Cygames to increase the drop rate of props, and also modified the card pool and guarantee mechanism to save money for the majority of players.
Cygames is helpless about this. Even internal employees complained that if they were allowed to manage the game alone, they would make a lot more money.
That year, Cygames took the initiative to lower its financial report revenue forecast because the expected revenue of "Dragalia Lost" was lower. To put it bluntly, it was all thanks to Nintendo.
But itâs not that Nintendo doesnât want to make money from mobile games. Shuntaro Furukawa said in 2018 that he hopes the company can launch more mobile games, with the goal of annual revenue of 100 billion yen (US$910 million) .
But after the "Mario Kart: Tour" mobile game was launched on September 25, 2019, Nintendo has not launched any new games for almost three years.
Nintendoâs change in attitude towards mobile games may be related to "Assemble!" Animal Crossing: New Horizons has something to do with it.
In 2020, the popularity of Animal Crossing brought Nintendo's revenue and profits to new highs, while mobile games were tepid, even worse than the revenue of the 3DS platform, which is in sharp contrast.
mobile game revenue is 418 million U.S. dollars,
Switch platform revenue is 9.344 billion U.S. dollarsâź
Now Nintendo has figured out that its own mobile games are a younger brother in the mobile game industry, and the console is particularly capable Fight, who should we focus on now? Isnât it clear at a glance?
So now Nintendo no longer mentions mobile games, and seems to want it to be forgotten by everyone in silence, although the mobile game business has brought Nintendo more than 1 billion US dollars in revenue over the years.
According to the analysis of data agencies, Nintendoâs current mobile game revenue is only about 7 million US dollars per month, which is less than 100 million US dollars a year, which is far from Shuntaro Furukawaâs original goal.
If this situation continues, old mobile games will come to the end of their lives one by one, and their monthly income will continue to decline.
However, Nintendo should not care about this. After all, IPs such as "Mario", "Kirby" and "Zelda" have stable output and sales are not worried. With more than 100 million Switch units sold, Nintendo has long been making money. .
In fact, this is quite good. After all, Nintendoâs entry into the mobile game business was considered a helpless move back then, because Nintendoâs corporate compatibility is not compatible with mobile games.
On the one hand, Nintendo has always used the "software and hardware matching" sales method to occupy the market. It improves gameplay by developing new equipment and matching it with specialized games.
But in terms of mobile games, Nintendo neither makes mobile phones nor mobile games. It can only design games based on the habits of mobile game users. Naturally, it will be a bit acclimatized. Its good results are really all due to the strong strength of its own IP.
On the other hand, although Nintendo has experienced so many twists and turns over the years and has had three presidents, the core concept of "fun" has not been abandoned.
Therefore, Nintendo only makes casual games in the field of mobile games. They only increase the drop rate of the krypton gold games, for fear that players will spend too much money and that players will not enjoy the game.
This approach will naturally make players really fall in love with the game.
For example, after the announcement of the closure of Dragalia Lost this time, all I saw in the relevant communities were blessings and thanks for the game, which was very harmonious.
Even the comment section of the app store is full of positive reviews, which is completely different from the situation of those ugly gold-priced mobile games after they were shut down.
This is why players can always trust Nintendo, because we may not know what it will do, but we all know what it will not do.
For example, in this era, it will bring players a console with only 720p resolution, but it will never force players to spend money, and will never forget to bring players a pure gaming experience.
