‘Nintendo does not want too much profit from mobile games for fear of image damage’

Nintendo wants the smartphone games it ties its name to not be too aggressive with microtransactions. The company would be afraid that it would suffer damage to its image if excesses took place.

According to sources from The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper noticed that a Japanese game developer lowered its profit forecast, implicitly blaming a Nintendo-published smartphone game. The game “got off to a good start, but performance is now lower than expected,” said the studio, called CyberAgent Inc. The game in question is Dragalia Lost, the studio made clear to the newspaper. “Nintendo is not interested in making a lot of money from a single smartphone game,” a studio spokesperson said. “If we spent the game ourselves, we could have made more.”

When asked, Nintendo also confirms this to The Wall Street Journal. “We discuss a variety of things, not just payments, to deliver high-quality fun to our customers,” said a spokesperson. However, the statement that Nintendo is about the brand’s image is not attributed to this spokesperson, but to other, anonymous sources who are familiar with Nintendo’s strategies.

The Wall Street Journal further notes that Nintendo’s sales target for its smartphone games is relatively modest. The Japanese company wants to bring in about 800 million euros per year with the games. A Sony mobile game, Fate/Grand Order, would earn more than that on its own. This goal mainly wants to achieve with more players instead of higher prices, Nintendo boss Furukawa said.