Fire Emblem Heroes and Super Mario Run are telling a tale of two Nintendos on the mobile front. Super Mario Run is an ambitious, traditionally developed product with one of the most iconic characters in video gaming, and yet it came up short on revenues thanks to Nintendo not wanting to sully its good name with… eww… microtransactions.
On the other hand, Fire Emblem Heroes comes from a less popular franchise and is a much more standard mobile affair with microtransaction options around every corner!
One has been downloaded 150 million times, one has been downloaded 15 million times. Guess which one has made more money, according to Nintendo's chief and Wall Street Journal reporter Takashi Mochizuki.
Nintendo: Mario Run, iOS and Android together, almost there to reach 150 million downloads.
— Takashi Mochizuki (@mochi_wsj) April 27, 2017
Nintendo chief: # of Fire Emblem downloads less than 1/10 of Mario, but revenue is bigger than Mario.
— Takashi Mochizuki (@mochi_wsj) April 27, 2017
Fire Emblem is the little franchise that could
Wow, good for Fire Emblem! I mean that as genuinely as I possibly can. I'm glad that the series' audience is expanding every day, and I'm glad that it showed Nintendo maybe mobile games aren't all that bad if you play by their rules.
It also shows that the series is much more viable than Nintendo ever imaged it could be and we should get the original Super Famicom games officially translated into English now…
Hey, at least I tried. Fire Emblem Heroes and Super Mario Run are both available for iOS and Android.
