Poche ore fa, il presidente di Nintendo, Tatsumi Kimishima, ha parlato del successo e l’evoluzione di Super Mario Run e Fire Emblem Heroes, le due app mobile della casa nipponica.
Sebbene il successo, ma anche la loro natura da “free to play”, entrambi i due titoli mobile di Nintendo hanno avuto i loro alti e bassi, evolvendosi di conseguenza, offrendo nuovi eventi giocabili all’utenza.
Super Mario Run è arrivato oltre i 200 milioni di download complessivi, riprendendosi dal punto di vista dell’acquisto completo del gioco, ma solamente dopo il lancio dei nuovi contenuti, aggiunti recentemente.
Super Mario Run has hit the 200 million mark for downloads. Overseas downloads comprise more than
90% of the total, and in spite of the difficulties in bringing a Japanese gaming application for smart
devices to the global market, we were able to distribute a Mario game broadly, including to countries and regions
not previously reached by our dedicated video game platform business.Our aim is for this application to be the definitive Mario application for smart devices. The major update to version 3.0 in September added, among other things, the new “Remix10” mode to allow for shorter bursts of thrilling play. Thankfully, it appears that “Remix10” and other updates have excited both consumers who have already purchased Super Mario Run as well as consumers who are downloading it for the first time. We also ran campaigns to foster more interest, including a special price offer for a limited period, to commemorate the release of the new version.
Although we have not yet reached an acceptable profit point, we have learned a lot in terms of game development and deployment that we want to take advantage of moving forward.
Fire Emblem Heroes invece è partito subito con il botto al lancio lo scorso febbraio, per poi vedersi calare pian pianino il numero di giocatori attivi, probabilmente derivante il fatto che il titolo richieda l’evocazione “casuale” di eroi, spesso davvero difficili da ottenere, anche sborsando soldi veri per le sfere di evocazione.
Ciò però non ha comportato un insuccesso dell’app dedicata a Fire Emblem, al contrario il titolo mobile di Nintendo e Intelligent Systems, dopo il brusco calo di attività la scorsa estate, si è ripreso dal mese di settembre, con nuovi eventi, eroi e contenuti aggiunti nel gioco.
We will continue on to Fire Emblem Heroes, released in February of this year. For this title, we listened to the voices of our consumers and provided continual updates. As the result, we are on track to meet our overall business objectives, including our profit objectives. Since this summer, we have been holding large-scale events, adding new characters, adjusting specifications, and running new promotional campaigns, all bringing about another increase in active users.
You might think that the Fire Emblem series is more popular within Japan, but the share of sales overseas for Fire Emblem Heroes is steadily growing. As you can see, the overseas share of total sales has been expanding for the past several months and has exceeded sales in Japan. By the end of the year, we will also add support for Traditional Chinese text, and expand service to five new target countries and regions: Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao, Thailand, and Singapore.
We will continue services for applications that have already been released, and we will continue releasing new smart device applications on the order of two to three per year