Nintendo intends to monetize its first mobile game with cosmetics

All we know about Nintendo’s first mobile game is that it’s going to be free-to-play, and it’s not really a game, but rather a Mii-based communication tool. That’s not what most us were imagining when we begged the company to enter the mobile gaming market, but this only the first of many games to come, which is why it’s important to see how Nintendo handles it, because that’ll give us an idea of what to expect from its future mobile games. The fact that it’s free-to-play is worrisome, but in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the president of the company that’s helping Nintendo make the games claimed that monetization will be achieved through purchasable cosmetics like clothing, at least in the beginning. 

We’ve all heard that Nintendo is teaming up with DeNA to release a handful of mobile games, the first of which has already been announced. While the game, called Miitomo, has yet to launch, a small amount of details have been trickling in over the weeks regarding the game’s premise. We know it will be a free-to-play title, and we know it’s not really a game at all – it’s more of a communication tool using Nintendo’s Mii characters. That may not be the best news in the world if you’ve been waiting for a legitimate port of Super Mario 64 or Yoshi’s Island for mobile devices, but hey, we still don’t know all the details yet. Recently, the president of DeNA, Isao Moriyasu, sat down with The Wall Street Journal to answer some questions about the upcoming title and the partnership with Nintendo. When asked how Miitomo will be different from other social networking or messaging services, Moriyasu told The Wall Street Journal: “Miitomo places more emphasis on entertainment. The process of discovering new aspects of your friends via Miis can be quite fun. One distinct aspect of Miitomo is how you can configure your Mii to have it look very similar to yourself. Communicating with friends who actually look like your friends in real life is a distinctly different feeling from text-based communication. We’re thinking of linking the game with users’ Facebook friend lists. I think it could be fun connecting with friends people don’t often communicate with.”