Nintendo Announces Next Games for Smartphones
April 27 2016 - 3:50AM
Dow Jones News
OSAKA—Nintendo Co. said Wednesday its next two games for
smartphones will be Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem, declining to
feature its most popular characters such as Mario the plumber for
now.
Nintendo long resisted jumping into the smartphone game industry
but switched course last year and teamed up with DeNA Co. to make
games for mobile devices. Nintendo has said it plans to release
five smartphone games by March 2017.
The first of those five, a smartphone app called Miitomo, was
released last month. The social-interaction game has been
downloaded by more than 10 millionusers globally, according to
Nintendo. It is free to download, but users can pay to play a game
within the game and purchase clothing for their characters.
Online survey provider SurveyMonkey estimated that the Miitomo
app is earning $280,000 a week through in-app purchases.
With the announcement of the new games featuring Animal Crossing
and Fire Emblem, Nintendo is dipping further into its stable of
characters developed over decades as a maker of console games.
The new mobile games will be released in the coming
autumn.
Separately, Nintendo's chief executive, Tatsumi Kimishima, said
a new videogame console that has been known by the code name NX,
would be released March next year, without elaborating.
Shigeru Miyamoto, a Nintendo executive known for creating many
of the Kyoto-based company's famous characters, said last year that
smartphone games would be Nintendo's new main revenue pillar.
Also Wednesday, Nintendo reported a 61% drop in its annual net
profit as the lack of popular new game releases led to sagging
sales of its aging hand-held game device.
The Kyoto-based videogame maker said its net profit during the
fiscal year ended on March 31 was 16.5 billion yen ($149 million),
a steep drop from ¥ 41.8 billion a year earlier. The company had
expected a profit of ¥ 17 billion.
Profit fell as sales of its Nintendo 3DS hardware slowed, and as
new game titles released during the period weren't able to match
the popularity of those released in the previous fiscal year, when
it had a bunch of million-hit titles, including Pokemon, Super
Smash Bros. and Yo-Kai Watch. Analysts also said the 3DS, which was
launched five years ago, is approaching the end of its life
cycle.
Because a majority of Nintendo's sales are outside Japan and it
has large holdings of dollars and euro, the company is vulnerable
to exchange-rate moves. Nintendo said recent gains in the yen hurt
its bottom line. Its operating profit, which excludes
foreign-currency holdings, stood at ¥ 32.9 billion. Nintendo had
expected an operating profit of ¥ 33 billion, compared with ¥ 25
billion a year earlier.
According to a survey of 15 analysts by FactSet, Nintendo was
expected to report an operating profit of ¥ 34 billion on revenue
of ¥ 506 billion, with a net profit of ¥ 17.4 billion. Nintendo
said its revenue during the term was ¥ 504 billion.
Write to Takashi Mochizuki at takashi.mochizuki@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 27, 2016 04:35 ET (08:35 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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