In Nintendo’s latest financial results briefing, the company shared an update on the worldwide performance of two smartphone titles Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes.
Super Mario Run
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
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.
Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes are available on iOS and Android.
