Nintendo likes to take half-steps forward, where it progresses slightly but makes some silly mistake that undermine the whole thing, but fortunately, it looks like its foray into mobile gaming won’t be one of those instances. We already know that the company will be releasing five mobile games between now and April 2017, in partnership with DeNA, but how it intended to monetize those games was unknown until today. During an earnings call earlier today, Nintendo clarified that all of its upcoming mobile games will be free-to-play. Now all we need to worry about is whether the microtransactions that support the games will be sensible or not.
Today Nintendo held their earnings call where the company confirmed some news that we have all been guessing at being true. All of Nintendo’s mobile games that are currently in development will be free-to-play titles with optional IAPs coming with them. This was pretty much a given fact back when Nintendo announced their publishing deal with DeNA for five mobile games to launch between now and April 2017. DeNA focuses solely on free-to-play mobile games, so when Nintendo announced their partnership with DeNA, the only real option was that their games would also be free-to-play. However, back in the end of October, Nintendo threw out a hopeful wrench into the whole thing when they revealed Miitomo, their first mobile game. When Nintendo CEO Kimishima took stage at last month’s press conference and Miitomo was presented to everyone, it was suggested that while this first game would be a free-to-play game, that subsequent releases would not be. Today, however, all of that has changed. Nintendo is very focused on keeping true to their catalog of IPs, so making them all free-to-play probably wasn’t the easiest decision on the planet to make. Interestingly enough, Nintendo was hesitant to actually refer to Miitomo as a game today, instead calling it a communication-based app.
