Nintendo’s lucrative mobile title Fire Emblem Heroes is showing no signs of slowing despite having being out in the wild for 18 months.
According to analytics outfit Sensor Tower, the free-to-play tactical RPG raked in more cash this summer than it did last year, with revenue between July and August rising to $63 million in 2018 from $47 million in 2017.
That represents a spending increase of 36 percent year-over-year, and shows players are still dropping cash in the hopes of obtaining rare hero characters using the title’s ‘gacha’ mechanic.
Despite being the company’s most successful mobile offering to date, one notable Nintendo employee isn’t enamored with its freemium trimmings.
Earlier this year Super Mario and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto expressed a desire to see developers become less reliant on free-to-play techniques, and suggested an overindulgence might result in consumers becoming less willing to pay for premium products.
It’s a fair point, but the results speak for themselves, and as it stands Fire Emblem Heroes accounts for 78 percent of Nintendo’s mobile revenue to-date, having earned over $400 million so far.
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2018