From Miitomo to Fire Emblem, Nintendo’s phone games are proving surprisingly profitable.
Nintendo has quietly made a lot of money in the mobile gaming market. Its lineup of smartphone games generates $2.2 billion in revenue each year. Nintendo has long been associated with consoles and handheld devices, but its move into mobile games has been more successful than most expected.
The Japanese gaming giant tried its hand at mobile games for the first time with the social app Miitomo in 2016. Since then, Nintendo has put out several other mobile games, slowly but surely building a library that has now made the company billions of dollars. A breakdown from the game industry, based on Sensor Tower data, shows that this figure excludes income from Pokémon Go, which remains a separate and highly profitable business.
Fire Emblem Heroes dominates the charts.
Of all mobile games, Fire Emblem Heroes has generated the most revenue, with an impressive $1.1 billion from just 19 million downloads. The game’s success, released in February 2017, shows that Nintendo has mastered the art of making money on mobile devices.
A lot of money has been made for Nintendo by other big games as well. Over 290 million copies of Mario Kart Tour have been downloaded, generating $365 million in revenue. The amount of money made is impressive, but not as much as Fire Emblem Heroes’ billion-dollar mark. This shows that record-breaking profits aren’t always the result of high download numbers.
While this was going on, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp had 75.5 million downloads and made $349 million, showing how popular Nintendo’s favorite franchises are on mobile devices. However, some smaller titles have not lived up to promises. Dragalia Lost was removed from the market after only 4.3 million downloads, yet it still generated $167 million in revenue.
Revenue isn’t always tied to install numbers.
Nintendo’s Super Mario Run, which is still available, has the most downloads (384 million), but it only made $96 million in sales. The $10 price tag, which means players buy the whole game at once, probably limits net earnings compared to free-to-play games with in-game purchases.
Other games that were taken off the market, like Dr. Mario World and Miitomo, made $13.8 million and $3.7 million, respectively. This shows that the mobile portfolio had a range of results. Meanwhile, Pikmin Bloom, which launched in 2021, remains popular with players, with 7.5 million downloads and $84.8 million in sales.
Fire Emblem Shadows, Nintendo’s newest game, has been out for only a few weeks, but 800,000 copies have already been downloaded, bringing in $200,000. Early sales aren’t very good, but the game could become as popular over time as Fire Emblem Heroes, suggesting the series will last.
Nintendo is best known for its video game systems, but its mobile businesses are also profitable and growing. Many investors and players see Nintendo’s mobile business as an important part of its huge empire, which is slowly but surely turning a profit.
