In Profit and Mobile Gaming, Could Nintendo Be Back?

Nintendo recently announced their first year in profit in four years, celebrating the continued success of the Wii U and the 3DS. But does the future look as bright as the present for Nintendo?

Launched alongside one of their trademark games for the Wii U, Super Smash Bros Melee, Nintendo got into the collectible miniature market. The Amiibo’s can be used in certain games, and will continue to be supported in future games, and with a reported sales of approximately 10.5 million figures sold, its clear to see why Nintendo has reacted well to the sales of their Amiibo’s. They did admit that people have been inconvenienced by the shortages on certain models, so much so that Nintendo have vowed to increase production of the models that have sold out or are “indispensable to play a certain game”. With approximately 66% of Amiibo sales sold in the US and Canada, with a further 20% in Europe and 11% sold in Japan there are clear regions where the Amiibo’s have been received better.

Future plans for the Amiibo’s include the release of a 3DS NFC Reader/Writer, allowing users of the original 3DS to use Amiibos, without having to buy the new model. A new selection of Amiibo’s will be released, including Yarn based Yoshi’s and card-type Amiibo’s, expanding on the figurine based collection that is currently available.

Nintedo celebrated, for the third year in a row, the increased digital sales, increasing by about 30% reaching a total of 31.3 billion yen (Approximately £1.69 billion).

One of the biggest announcements was the development of games on smart devices using Nintendo IP. What this actually means long-term is you can expect to see Nintendo characters and games making their way onto smartphones and tablets, with a focus on combining all of their services together to create a unified background for all the different systems.

Alongside their new mobile games and Amiibo’s Universal Park and Resorts will be using Nintendo IP to create a selection of new rides and theme part attractions.

Out of all of this I take one thing away, Pokemon may be coming to smartphones and tablets! We can dream, right? I mean, the Smart boy, was originally announced as an April Fools joke, Hyperkin have announced that they will be creating a device that will turn the iPhone 6 Plus (and maybe other smart phones) into a Gameboy colour, letting those who are old enough to remember the device to own one and enjoy classics such as Pokemon Red and Blue with an original feeling controller.

Information courtesy of Nintendo.