Nintendo is al jaren actief op smartphones. Beginnende met Super Mario Run hebben ze ondertussen redelijk wat games. Sommigen zoals Miitomo en Dr. Mario zijn ondertussen offline, terwijl anderen actief worden ondersteund zoals Pikmin Bloom en Fire Emblem Heroes. Ook hebben ze verschillende applicaties zoals voor Nintendo Switch Online en Nintendo Music. Toch zijn ze niet heel actief. Toch zeggen ze niet klaar te zijn met smartphones, aldus Furukawa.
In de Q&A die volgde op de resultaten van afgelopen kwartaal werd Furukawa gevraagd naar de strategie met telefoons. Zo begon de vraag over dat er langere tijd geen games uitgebracht zijn, maar wel Nintendo Music en ondersteuning als controller met Everybody 1-2-Switch en of er dus een verschuiving in focus is geweest. Daar werd het volgende op geantwoord:
We have released mobile apps in many regions around the world, including countries and regions that cannot be reached by the game console business, and the cumulative number of downloads of our apps by the end of September 2024 has exceeded 900 million. This has provided more opportunities for people to engage with Nintendo’s IP and characters.
Currently, we operate three game apps: Fire Emblem Heroes, Mario Kart Tour, and Super Mario Run. In addition, we jointly develop and operate Pikmin Bloom, distributed by Niantic. While Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp ended its service on November 29, 2024, we released a paid version called Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete on December 3, 2024. We cannot provide details regarding future app developments, but we are continuing to develop new game apps.
Additionally, we began distributing Nintendo Music in October of last year. We hope to take advantage of the widespread popularity of smartphones to create opportunities for people to experience the worlds of our games and our music outside of their game consoles. We plan to continue these efforts in various ways for each individual title, including linking them to games.
As you pointed out, it is true that smartphones are replacing our dedicated game consoles as the first game consoles to play. In light of this environment, we have been considering various things about what can be done with smartphones, and we will continue to do so in the future. In last year’s Management Policy Briefing, in the explanation of “expanding the population that comes into contact with Nintendo IP,”
we mentioned that we are using theme parks, official stores, videos, and mobile to get people interested in our core business of dedicated game consoles. Even as we move to Nintendo Switch 2 in the future, it will be important to expand our points of contact with consumers outside of game consoles, and we believe that smartphones will play a very large role in this, so we will continue to research and work on this. ~ Shuntaro Furukawa, President van Nintendo
