How Nintendo is Changing the Gaming Experience…Again
As a Gen-Z, I spent a large portion of the late ’90s and early 2000s battling against friends on Nintendo’s racing game, Mario Kart 64. For readers who also played video games on the Nintendo 64, you know exactly how far gaming has come since the days when ‘troubleshooting’ a game was to blow on it in hopes of removing dust particles.
Nintendo Switch is a common phrase in my house and from personal experience, just as common in the homes of many coworkers and friends as well. After receiving much fanfare following the 2018 release of Super Mario Party for the Nintendo Switch, the game and console developer realized its next iteration of Mario was upon them. Next, we’ll examine what that new version of Mario looks like and how it helped Nintendo reach a new financial milestone.
Nintendo Reaches $1B in Lifetime Player Spending on Mobile
Since the console giant debuted everyone’s favorite plumber in 1985, Mario has had an expansive range of looks and just as many ways to engage with him and his bros. In an effort to keep pace with his dynamic fan base, Nintendo decided to make Mario mobile. The fourteenth game of the franchise, Mario Kart Tour, was released on Google Play and the App Store in September 2019. Unlike Nintendo’s previous mobile-based Mario disappointment, Super Mario Run, the mobile iteration of Mario was a huge success.
Despite having a late release date, Mario Kart Tour was the top game on the App Store in 2019 and the most downloaded among free games that same year — even beating out Epic Games’ battle royale game, Fortnite. Along with Mario Kart Tour, Nintendo’s highest grossing mobile game, Fire Emblem Heroes (released in 2017) helped the Japan-based company reach $1 billion in revenue from its mobile games. However, the game maker’s victory lap was short-lived. Close on the heels of their monumental success, competition was brewing for Nintendo.
Cloud Gaming Breakthrough: One Versus All
While Nintendo found a likely sidekick in Microsoft after years of rivalry, their collective foe, Sony, has played into one of Microsoft’s specialties: cloud technology. After announcing a partnership between their two companies in early 2019, Sony and Microsoft are working together to make the cloud gaming world more streamlined. The history-making collaboration will see the two power players go head to head with other cloud gaming companies, like Google and Nvidia. Leveraging their respective technologies, like artificial intelligence and cloud computing, Microsoft and Sony aim to enhance streaming services such as Playstation Now and the Xbox GamePass.
Although a ‘one versus all’ scenario may not seem fair, Nintendo game producer and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto isn’t threatened. Historically speaking, the console king prefers a tight-lipped strategy when it comes to their future plans. Miyamoto acknowledged that the company may seem to be falling behind when it comes to their cloud gaming capabilities (or lack thereof) but the veteran game maker was frank about one thing: their commitment to localized gaming. In an article released in July 2019 by TechCrunch, Miyamoto had this to say:
“I think that cloud gaming will become more widespread in the future, but I have no doubt that there will continue to be games that are fun because they are running locally and not on the cloud.”
President of Nintendo, Shuntaro Furukawa, agrees with Miyamoto on the absence of cloud gaming services from their offerings. Earlier this year, Furukawa stated he believes cloud gaming is still a far-off endeavor for Nintendo and that hardware devices for gaming aren’t going away. Meanwhile, Microsoft launched their cloud gaming service, Project xCloud, last month.
Related Reading: What 5G Means for Mobile Gamers
The Growth of Mobile Gaming
As Nintendo remains unbothered by its competitors’ thirst for cloud gaming services, the veteran game enterprise continues on with mobile game development. And, after reports that mobile gaming accounted for 40% of mobile app install spending in 2019, it’s not a bad course to be on. Furthemore, App Annie’s recent report, ‘State of Mobile 2020,’ shows that mobile app consumer spend was predominantly driven by mobile gaming. With 2.4 billion mobile gamers worldwide and more gamers turning to mobile games each day, perhaps Nintendo bet on the right player in this race.
The evolution of gaming has partly been due to a technological arms race between the industry’s heavy hitters. When it comes to gamers, however, they’ve taken note of a distinct cultural shift and decided to go where their friends are. After Fortnite debuted in 2017, I observed that it was played more by adults and high schoolers. Today, there’s a new generation in the mix (hello zoomers). With their obsession of watching other gamers stream live on YouTube and Twitch, this new group of gamers helped popularize the influencer genre.
Although Gen-Z’s and later generations have had to make space for our young successors, we still want to enjoy our old classics in HD — a luxury unknown in our formative years. Personally, my present-day battles are with my younger brothers over whose turn it is on the Xbox One. But I will always stick with the old mantra that got me through many days of losing the TV while they played Mario Kart 64: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. With that, it’s time for me to boot up the Fortnite mobile app.
