Prior to 2015 Leading into the 2010s, Nintendo principally offered its portable console, the
Nintendo DS, and its home console, the
Wii; along with several internally-developed titles in several major video game franchises, such as
Super Mario and
The Legend of Zelda, which would release exclusively on their hardware. Driven by novel hardware concepts such as the dual-screen nature of the DS line and the motion
Wii Remote, both systems had become Nintendo's best-selling handheld and home consoles by the end of 2009. Entering the new decade, Nintendo resolved to maintain this strategy and the overall "dedicated hardware and software"
business model with the successor devices to these consoles, the
Nintendo 3DS and
Wii U, respectively. The 2010s saw the growth of
mobile gaming with wide adoption of
smartphones and
tablet computers. By 2012, the mobile gaming market was estimated to be worth , compared to the overall
video game industry's net value of , and expected to be the largest driver of growth in the video game market over the next several years, according to research firm Newzoo. As mobile gaming grew, Nintendo was criticized for not taking risks in this area, prompted when the valuation of
GungHo Online Entertainment, the publishers of the financially successful
Puzzle & Dragons, exceeded that of Nintendo's in June 2013. These concerns were also compounded by lower-than-projected sales numbers for the aforementioned Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, which had caused Nintendo's stock price to drop. These sentiments were later echoed by
Nintendo of America president
Reggie Fils-Aimé saying "When the consumer wants to play Mario, Zelda, and Pokémon, they have to purchase our hardware to do so. And that preserves our overall financial model." In January 2014, when issuing a lowering of its financial forecast for the
fiscal year due to continued underperformance, Iwata expressed a more open attitude towards the mobile market, saying "Given the expansion of smart devices, we are naturally studying how smart devices can be used to grow the game-player business," but that "It's not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone." Later that year, Iwata went further by stating "... I believe that the era has ended when people play all kinds of games only on dedicated gaming systems." This coincided with
The Pokémon Company, a joint venture company created to manage the
Pokémon brand separately from Nintendo's other intellectual property, beginning work with third-party developers to create games for smartphones and tablets, initially with
Pokémon TCG Online released in September 2014.
2015–2020 Following the end of the 2014 fiscal year, Iwata,
Tatsumi Kimishima,
Genyo Takeda, and
Shigeru Miyamoto crafted a new strategy for Nintendo to bring them back into profitability, which included approaching the mobile market, creating new hardware, and "maximizing [their] intellectual property" For the mobile gaming area, Iwata initiated discussions with
DeNA, a large Japanese mobile platform developer and provider. In March 2015, Nintendo and DeNA announced a partnership to jointly develop at least five mobile game titles, with one title planned to be released by the end of that year. Part of this deal including Nintendo acquiring 10% of DeNA's stock, while DeNA obtained about 1.24% of Nintendo's. When elaborating on the partnership, Iwata said that Nintendo had found a way with DeNA to bring its franchises to mobile devices that took advantage of unique control methods offered by these devices, and stated their belief that their mobile effort will "become an opportunity for the great number of people around the world who own smart devices—but do not have interest in dedicated video game hardware—to be interested in Nintendo IP and eventually to become fans of our dedicated game systems." At the time of announcement, Nintendo had not committed to whether their mobile games would be
free-to-play or require a single up-front cost, but Iwata did assure that they would stay to payment schemes that parents would be comfortable with for letting their children play. Near the end of calendar year 2017, Nintendo was reportedly in talks with additional mobile platform providers including GungHo to expand their mobile game offerings, as well as extending their current DeNA deal, according to
The Wall Street Journal. Upon announcement of the jointly developed and operated title
Dragalia Lost in April 2018, Nintendo also announced it had acquired about a 5% stake in Japanese mobile game developer
Cygames. Around the same time, Kimishima announced he was stepping down as Nintendo's president, to be replaced by
Shuntaro Furukawa. Furukawa stated that he planned to continue Nintendo's drive into mobile games towards being a (approximately US$1 billion) per year revenue source for the company, and try to create more games that were as successful as
Pokémon Go.
2020–present Bloomberg News reported in June 2020 that Nintendo was unlikely to further pursue major efforts on the mobile market.
Bloomberg attributed this to the impact of the
COVID-19 pandemic, which caused players to move away from Nintendo's mobile games to other games and failing to reach the projected revenue targets estimated in 2018;
Sensor Tower reported double-digit drops in player counts in games like
Super Mario Run and
Fire Emblem Heroes, while the company's console titles such as
Animal Crossing: New Horizons saw massive sales which helped drive Nintendo's profits to a twelve-year high. At a shareholders' meeting the same month, Furukawa stated that there were no new plans for games in the mobile area, though the business still remains important to the company for different reasons outside of revenue including exposure of the brand of Nintendo, its franchises and the establishment of Nintendo accounts into customers. In March 2021, Nintendo and
Niantic announced a partnership to create other mobile games based in Nintendo IP for AR, similar to
Pokémon Go. Niantic's
Pikmin Bloom was released at the end of 2021. An
Axios report suggested that these were motivated by the low contribution of these titles to Nintendo's financials, as the company had reported over $4.5 billion in revenue from sales of the Switch and its games between April and September 2022, but only $169 million from its mobile games. In 2023, Miyamoto announced that future
Mario games would not be mobile, citing that Nintendo's focus is on its hardware and play experiences that integrate with that hardware.
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp would end service in 2024, being replaced with a paid offline version with no microtransactions. In February 2025, Furukawa would reaffirm Nintendo's commitment to mobile games during an investor Q&A session, stating that the company was "continuing to develop new game applications" and that
mobile content remains an important element in generating interest for their core business alongside other initiatives such as theme parks and feature films. Later that year, the company would release
Hey, Mario!, an app geared towards young children for both mobile device and Nintendo consoles, and
Fire Emblem Shadows, a
social deduction game and the second mobile spin-off in the
Fire Emblem series. ==Games==