Nintendo planning to release 2 or 3 mobile games per year

Tatsumi Kimishima, president of Nintendo, has told Japanese newspaper Kyoto Shimbun that the company plans to release about three mobile titles every year, starting in 2017.

Nintendo has seen great success in the mobile market since its debut with Miitomo back in March and has swept up even more users with Super Mario Run, which became the most downloaded App Store title ever with over 40m downloads in the first four days of release. Kimishima says the numbers for Super Mario Run are what the company had expected and that we should expect Nintendo to remain committed to providing applications based on their own IPs on the mobile platform.

Pokémon GO, although developed by Niantic, has also helped Nintendo massively–it is thought that its enormous popularity among a younger audience helped drive the sales of Pokémon Sun and Moon on 3DS.

However, interest in Nintendo mobile titles has tended to nosedive shortly after release and the story is no different with Super Mario Run. Despite a massive install base, some players took issue with the full game unlock costing £7.99/$9.99 as well as the huge data drains. Shares in the company fell in the days following release, raising concerns that investors are struggling to see Nintendo’s presence in the mobile market being anything more than temporary.

The company have already announced that they are working on Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing titles, which are expected to launch next year.

Thanks, Serkan Toto.