Having already released its first iPhone game Miitomo, a bespoke social networking game, Nintendo is now teasing the next round of games headed to the iPhone and iOS devices. Notably, unlike Miitomo, these are going to be versions of existing successful Nintendo franchises: Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem.
Although Animal Crossing is not quite on the same podium as Super Mario, it is still major first-party intellectual property for Nintendo to release on non-Nintendo consoles for the first time. The new smartphone and tablet titles are expected to be released later this year, around October.
Details about the new titles are scarce, with little more than a teaser tweet from the company to go on. Nintendo has announced it will release 5 iOS titles by the end of its fiscal year in March 2017. Its first release, Miitomo, received good reviews but hardcore fans are anxious to see traditional games appearing on iOS with recognizable characters.
On Wii and DS, Animal Crossing is a life simulation game where players control a village populated by humanoid animals, furnishing houses and helping out with various tasks in the town. Fire Emblem is a more traditional fighter RPG for ‘serious gamers’, so it will be interesting to see how that is translated to the mobile space.
Some fans are worried Nintendo will ruin series like Animal Crossing on mobile with In-App Purchases or other free-to-play models. The company is yet to confirm how it plans to monetize its titles. It is also unclear whether Nintendo will ever let its flagship top-tier IP games, like Mario or Zelda, appear outside its own consoles.
The announcement regarding its smart devices plans follows disappointing Nintendo company earnings, where profit for the year dropped 60 percent due to light hardware sales. Nintendo’s next-generation console, codenamed the Nintendo NX, is due to be released early in 2017.
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Makes you wonder what Nintendo must be thinking, just bring Mario Kart to the App Store and have done with it. Problem solved, revenues up.
Mario Kart is Nintendo’s biggest selling series. It even beats mainline Mario games. The production values are sky high and the game’s price tag reflects that. Fancy buying an iOS game for £40? As that’s what it would cost. Nintendo don’t make low budget games.
The market is so much larger than console owners, it’s unbelievable. I think that would make a difference when it came time to price a prospective iOS Mario Kart. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but the Wii U was announced in November 2012, and since then has sold 12.8M units; in that same timeframe, Apple has sold ~715M iPhones — 55x more devices.
That aside, why do you think they haven’t found a way to re-release old NES/SNES titles in the $5 range? Personally, I’d be happy pay solely for the nostalgia!
I may not be the norm, but give me these games, in this order, at this price, and, YES, I will buy them. Not games loaded with IAPs, but the full games, preferably universal (iPhone/iPad at least. I can understand/respect not wanting to port to TV).
1. Mario Kart – $49.99
2. Mario Party – $39.99
3. Super Mario Bros. – $49.99
Again, I will pay those prices for the full experience, with precisely zero IAPs.
Unless Nintendo makes a killing from hardware sales, I don’t see what they have to lose.
It depends on how you look at it. Historically, the main Super Mario series has sold a whopping 310 million copies where Mario Kart is at about 110 million as of 2014. Granted there have been two new Mario Kart entries since then I believe. Purely monetarily speaking, Pokemon is the largest revenue making brand for software sales at 57 billion. Even with inflation it’s worth roughly twice what the Mario franchise is.
Actually a bit excited to see how Animal Crossing is presented to us. If they make it a freemium app I can see it becoming a frustration and a bad sign for apps to come.
Or they can release garbage like they did on the 3DS “Happy Home Designer”. Meanwhile finding the never released Animal Forest for the N64 and running it on iOS might be your best bet.
Pokémon isn’t owned by Nintendo, but co-owned with Game Freak under The Pokémon Company International.
And anyway, Pokémon games and apps have already appeared on iOS – Pokémon Trading Card Game Online being one of them.
Remains to be seen if these are full fat versions of these games or just pointless spin-offs. Nintendo has a long and embarrassing history of miserably bad spin offs on their own hardware where they can still charge £30-40 a pop. On mobile where such prices are apparently too high as iOS/Android gamers are infantile skinflints who cannot appreciate quality software I dread to think how mangled these games will be.
Rather obvious too that you’re not a gamer Benjamin. Fire Emblem is an SRPG, and yes, it’s hardcore. Not Dark Souls hardcore, but it still has permadeath on anything but baby difficulty levels. It also has a deep storyline which heads into visual novel territory in places, and there’s even a bit of lightweight dating sim in there too. It’s an amazing series, so I hope Nintendo don’t out out a Fire Emblem pay to win match three or something equally offensive.
If ever there was company that doesn’t get it, Nintendo is the company that doesn’t get.
I would love to see them bring the Virtual Console to multiple platforms including AppleTV (TVOS), PS4, and so on. Keep the big new games on the new console and make $$$ off the classics from as many people as possible regardless of what platform they are on. If they are making good money on digital then it should not matter where that digital transaction occurs. Putting classic games in front of people on other platforms gives them the opportunity to advertise the new stuff to those people and increase awareness of their latest products.
“The announcement regarding its smart devices plans follows disappointing Nintendo company earnings, where profit for the year dropped 60 percent due to light hardware sales.” No SHIT Sherlock. How the hell do you expect your hardware to sell, if there’s no GODDAMNED SOFTWARE FOR IT. The WiiU’s got shit games, like 3 are OK. And the Zelda promise was pushed back to become the NX launch Title. Fuck you Nintendo. FUCK YOU.
Wii U has plenty of great titles, just not from third parties. It’s exclusive lineup is far stronger than the Xbox or PS combined at this point, but without third party developers they miss a huge chunk of the market.
The announcement regarding its smart devices plans follows disappointing Nintendo company earnings, where profit for the year dropped 60 percent due to light hardware sales. No SHIT Sherlock!. How do you expect to sell your stupid Hardware when there’s no goddamned Software to go with it?!? WiiU’s got shitty games, and 3 OK-ish ones. And Zelda U was supposed to bring in the munz, but NOO. It just became the NX’s launch title. Fuck this shit, Nintendo and Fuck YOU. You’ve disappointed me for the last time.
So excited to see what they do for Animal crossing. I loved playing it on my DS years ago. The only Nintendo games I’ve missed are Animal Crossing and Pokemon. So I can’t wait for Animal Crossing to come out!
#donkeykong
I’d love Super Mario Bros. Especally if there was a version for Apple TV.