Company is "considering various possibilities" regarding 3DS successor
Nintendo's new representative director and president Shuntaro Furukawa said after a stockholder meeting on Thursday that the company would need to earn 100 billion yen (about US$902 million) from smartphone games in order for them to be a primary source of revenue for the company.
Nintendo entered the smartphone game market with the Miitomo app in March 2016. Including character usage fees, the company has earned 39.3 billion yen (about US$350 million) from smartphone games as of March 2018. The number represents 4% of on Nintendo's total earnings, and Furukawa said, "[Smartphone games] will be an important business from now on. [Earning 100 billion yen] will be difficult, but it's a challenge worth pursuing."
Furukawa noted in the interview that the Nintendo Switch has been selling well, and the company's ambition is to spread the system on the scale of one unit per person. In addition, Furukawa mentioned the seven-year history of the Nintendo 3DS and said that the company is "considering various possibilities" about a successor to the handheld system.
The Wall Street Journal newspaper reported in December that Nintendo was seeking to establish more tie-ups with smartphone game developers, in light of its mobile game schedule falling behind. The report claimed that GungHo Online Entertainment(Puzzle & Dragons) had been in discussions with Nintendo, but GungHo has denied that discussions took place.
In 2015, Nintendo partnered with DeNA to lend its intellectual property for the creation and launch of "approximately" five smartphone titles by March 2017. Through that partnership, Nintendo and DeNA have released the Super Mario Run, Miitomo, Fire Emblem Heroes, and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp games.
Miitomo reached more than 10 million users worldwide, but it ended service on May 9. Super Mario Run launched for iOS devices in December 2016 and for Android devices in March 2017, and it topped Apple's list of free iPhone games in 2017. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp launched worldwide on November 22, and is Nintendo's second-largest mobile game launch next to Super Mario Run. Fire Emblem Heroeslaunched in February 2017.