Nintendo’s upcoming pair of mobile games will be free to play, DeNA chief executive Isao Moriyasu revealed in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Nintendo has since corroborated this claim.
The two games, based on the Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing franchises, represent Nintendo’s first attempts at bringing “pure gaming” experiences to the mobile space, in contrast to Miitomo, which was more of a social-oriented app.
The games will still be monetized in some way. Moriyasu stressed that the games would be “free-to-start,” which implies there will likely be content behind a paywall. That said, we still don’t know any specifics about what that monetized content might include.
As Nintendo stated when they announced the Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem apps, their goal is to provide a mobile library with “multiple types of apps that appeal to different audiences and different groups of players.”
All we know for a fact is that an Animal Crossing mobile app seems like a pleasantly dangerous way to lose thousands of hours of my life.