Sensor Tower, which monitors mobile app’s marketplace performance, has some positive stats for Nintendo’s mobile games from 2018.
Last year Nintendo’s saw nearly $117 million in worldwide player spending in their mobile games. These figures are inclusive of the App Store and Google Play during the fourth quarter of 2018. This represented a 47 percent increase over the 4th quarter of 2017 and was driven primarily by its latest release, Dragalia Lost. That title took in approximately $54.2 million during the fourth quarter.
In total Nintendo took in $348 million during calendar year 2018, which represented an increase of 15 percent over 2017.
- Fire Emblem Heroes — $230 million
- Dragalia Lost — $58.4 million
- Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp — $48.6 million
- Super Mario Run — $10 million
Fire Emblem Heroes, Dragalia Lost, and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp are all free-to-play games with in-app micro transcactions. Super Mario Run is a free-to-start title with a one time in-app purchase to unlock full content. In 2017 Super Mario Run earned $31 million.
Headed into 2019 Nintendo has one other announced title in the pipeline, Mario Kart Tour. The game, which is expected to launch before the end of March, is expected to feature traditional in-app purchase microtransactions. Nintendo hasn’t released any information about the upcoming title at all aside from the name and logo.
In other Nintendo mobile news, Pokémon GO from Nintendo and Niantic earned $795 million worldwide in 2018. With a consistent rollout of new Pokémon generations and new features, including the long-awaited arrival of player vs player multiplayer, Pokémon GO earned an average of nearly $2.2 million per day during 2018. By contrast the game earned $1.6 million per day in 2017. The worldwide phenemonon has earned a total of $2.2 billion since launching in July 2016.
