Miitomo Revamp, Super Mario Run Details & More Nintendo Mobile News
Today President of Nintendo, Tatsumi Kimishima, outlined what’s next for Nintendo’s smart device category. The three main goals with the mobile business are to maximize the number of people who have access to Nintendo’s IP, make the business profitable on its own, and create synergy with Nintendo’s dedicated video game system business.
As we already know, Miitomo was Nintendo’s first smartphone application when it released back in March. It was a relative success with 15 million unique users, although it didn’t generate much income for Nintendo. Nintendo’s goal with the title was to unite as many people as possible across the world by letting its users connect with their friends. These same friends will be able to be accessed in the upcoming Super Mario Run mobile game, which is releasing in December.
Nintendo is getting ready to rollout a brand new update to revamp Miitomo into a communication application. You will soon be able to send unique messages to your friends using your Mii character. Additional features are being implemented as well. I don’t know about you, but most of my friends who used to log into Miitomo on a regular basis have abandoned the app. I still try and check in daily to get my rewards, so hopefully this new update will add some very enticing features to get some of my friends back.
As I mentioned earlier, Super Mario Run is the next smart device app from Nintendo. Thanks to the power of Mario, over 20 million people have already signed up to be notified when the game is to be released.
The progress on the game is going great and Nintendo has announced today that it will be available in about 150 countries this year for iPhone and iPad. There will be an Android version of the game released at some point in the future. The actual download of the game will be free, but it will be limited until you pay for it. In other words, it’s a basically a demo download that fully unlocks when you buy it. Once the title is purchased there won’t be any additional fees. Pricing will be announced soon.
Nintendo didn’t share any new information regarding its other mobile games in development. Both Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem are still slated to arrive by the end of March. We will have more details as they approach release.
[Source: Nintendo Investor Relations]
Craig has been covering the video game industry since 1995. His work has been published across a wide spectrum of media sites. He’s currently the Editor-In-Chief of Nintendo Times and contributes to Gaming Age.
