Nintendo Co’s two-year-old experiment in mobile gaming is heading for uncharted territory with Dragalia Lost, its first smartphone title featuring original characters rather than its established stars.
Codeveloped with new partner CyberAgent Inc, the free-to-play game debuted yesterday on Apple and Android devices in the US, Japan and Asia.
Instead of relying on an all-star lineup of characters like Super Mario and Donkey Kong to generate buzz, Nintendo is betting on an unknown cast of heroes and a new fantasy world full of dragons.
That is a big gamble and the early signs were worrisome. Fewer than 1 million players had preregistered to download Dragalia Lost.
Nintendo’s Super Mario Run for mobile devices notched up more than 20 million registrations prior to its release in late 2016.
“Investors think it will be hard for original intellectual property to create a hit,” said Hideki Yasuda, a senior analyst at Ace Research Institute.
For years, Nintendo shunned games that would run on smartphones instead of its own consoles, but the mobile sector has become increasingly important to its financial results.
With Nintendo’s hybrid Switch console effectively combining two individual lines of business — handheld consoles like 3DS and home machines like the Wii — into one, Nintendo’s ability to make up any revenue shortfall largely depends on growing earnings from smartphone games like Dragalia Lost.
Last month’s 13-minute reveal video of Dragalia Lost generated a mostly muted reaction online. The presentation showed off vibrant graphics and a colorful cast of warriors and dragons that join the player to defend a fictional kingdom against an evil force.
However, the video also detailed the game’s emphasis on buying loot boxes, repetitive gameplay called grinding and rewards for constantly opening the app.
CyberAgent is known for financially successful titles like GranBlue Fantasy that rely on aggressive monetization of users.
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said he expects smartphones to generate ￥100 billion (US$890 million) in annual revenue in the “near future.”
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