In late March this year, Nintendo launched “Assemble! "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" is a hot seller around the world. The unprecedented success of the game series has led the Japanese game company to consider withdrawing from the mobile game field and focusing on its own mobile platform.
《Assemble! "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" is an unprecedented best-selling work in the "Animal Crossing" series. It sold more than 13 million units worldwide in the first 6 weeks of its launch. It not only exceeded the cumulative sales of the previous game in 8 years, but also became the fastest-selling game on Nintendo Switch. , surpassing the sales speed of heavyweight IPs such as "Super Mario" and "The Legend of Zelda".
The popularity of "Animal Crossing" has also boosted Switch sales. In March this year, sales increased 63% year-on-year to US$461 million. Sales that month even exceeded game consoles such as PS4 and Xbox One. Not only is it currently overtaking Xbox One sales in less than half the launch time, it is also expected to surpass the historical sales of the Famicom before the end of the year.
"Animal Crossing" is so successful that Nintendo will postpone the launch of mobile games
Also because of the success of "Animal Crossing", Nintendo is gradually considering reducing its investment in the field of mobile games. According to "Bloomberg", at the financial report meeting in May this year, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said that they will not necessarily continue to launch a large number of new mobile games.
With the popularity and performance improvement of mobile phones, mobile games have almost become a battleground for various game manufacturers in recent years. The investment required for development is far less than that of console and computer games, but they can easily obtain huge profits. Nintendo also began to enter this field in 2016. In 2018, Shuntaro Furukawa said that the mobile game field has great development potential and will become a business generating revenue of US$1 billion. Obviously, it also wants to capitalize on the endless business opportunities of mobile games. The field gets a piece of the pie.
html In 2019, "Honor of Kings" ranked third in revenue with US$1.6 billion
In 2019, global mobile game revenue has reached approximately US$68 billion. Research company Newzoo estimates that the mobile game market will reach US$77.2 billion in 2020, accounting for nearly 50% of the overall gaming industry revenue. After entering 2020, Nintendo has almost no new news on mobile games. Except for the recently launched casual game "Pokémon Café Mix", there is no information on the development of new games. Analysts at
believe that the outstanding performance of Switch and "Animal Crossing" this year means that this major game manufacturer no longer has to bet on the field of mobile games and can focus on game development on its own platform.
html ranked second in revenue in 2019 "DNF" with $1.6 billion
html ranked first in revenue in 2019 with $1.8 billion "Fortnite"
Mobile games may harm the brand image, and the results of investment in recent years have not shown
Nintendo has reduced its focus on mobile games investment, part of the reason is considered to be to maintain the brand image. Although the mobile game market has endless business opportunities, it has always been a controversial area. In particular, the common profit model of Japanese mobile games is "gashapon". This business method that induces players to continuously spend money to chase rare characters and props has caused widespread controversy in recent years. debate.
The Japanese government has also announced that the "Scenery Representation Act" applies to the virtual field in order to restrict gashapon commercial laws, and has successively revised laws to strengthen control; the Japan Online Game Association (JOGA) has even voluntarily established gashapon regulations and called on the industry to self-restrain.
In order to prevent similar controversies from affecting Nintendo's brand image, "Bloomberg" pointed out that Nintendo has asked mobile game development partners not to let players spend too much money in games. The "Super Mario Run" launched in the past also adopted a one-time payment to unlock the charging model. Although this mobile game exceeded 40 million downloads within 4 days of its release, the revenue did not reach the expected level.
"Pokémon Café Mix"
Perhaps due to concerns about damaging the brand image, Nintendo's mobile games have always performed mediocrely. In the latest financial report, Nintendo’s mobile game and IP-related revenue categories in the past year were 51.2 billion yen, a year-on-year increase of 11.5%, accounting for only about 4% of overall revenue.
Some people believe that many of the IPs operated by Nintendo are inconsistent with the orientation of the Japanese mobile game market. Making money through gashapon requires the support of a huge character lineup. Many of Nintendo's well-known IPs such as Mario and The Legend of Zelda are not consistent. Only Bao IPs such as Kamu and Holy Fire Conquering Demons can meet the needs of gashapon.
And by bringing players together on its own platform, it can not only promote the sales of game consoles, but also eliminate the need to share profits with other partners. It is definitely a better choice for Nintendo. What's more, Switch and mobile phones are both mobile platforms, and to some extent they are also competing products.
Nintendo’s next mobile game is still unknown. DeNA, a company that cooperates with Nintendo to develop many mobile games such as “Pokemon Masters” and “Mario Kart Tour”, also revealed that it will not launch it this year. There will be new works released.
"Pokémon Masters"
At the moment when Nintendo announced that it would not launch a large number of new mobile games, its stock price plummeted 4%. Obviously, no matter how good Animal Crossing and Switch perform, investors are still unwilling to let go of Nintendo. US dollar mobile game market. In this atmosphere, Japanese mobile game consultant Serkan Toto believes that Nintendo will not completely withdraw from the field of mobile games, and future new games are likely to be launched just to cope with shareholders.
In short, Nintendo will focus its development on Switch games, which will be the trend in recent years anyway.
