Nintendo bucked mobile for a long time. The company didn’t want to water down its games with shortened mobile offerings.
But Nintendo’s stance didn’t bode well for the company that was seeing loss. As a result, the company brought games like Animal Crossing and Miitomo to smartphones everywhere. Neither one of those games hit it off spectacularly well.
Today, rumour has it that Nintendo is about to bring the beloved Zelda game to mobile. The Wall Street Journal originally reported on the story, but WSJ didn’t have too much to say. Keeping with tradition, Nintendo isn’t divulging too much information at the moment. What is known is that Zelda is coming to mobile in some form.
Game Possibilities
Nintendo will have to adapt Zelda for mobile. That much is clear. It’s just the nature of the mobile game beast. But how will Zelda be adapted? Some speculate that Nintendo will create a completely different game. Others note that Zelda might come in the same basic game form but with a few mobile twists.
Regardless, the news itself is somewhat shocking. For a very long time now, Nintendo didn’t want to bring Zelda to mobile in any form. The company tried to create consoles that would sell and games that would entice without any kind of mobile option, but that just didn’t pan out. Now, it seems, Nintendo is racing to expand its mobile lineup.
No Success Thus Far
When Nintendo first debuted Miitomo, the company saw massive downloads - in the millions, in fact. After that initial burst and surge in users, Miitomo kind of became a ghost town. The game was structured in a way that required users to spend some time outfitting individual Miis at the start, but after that the game relied on other users.
Seemingly, people that did download the game just weren’t into dressing Miis up with hair and other accessories. Nintendo was hoping that users would rely on Miitomo as a way to socialize through mobile with other users, but that just didn’t happen. If you were to log into your Miitomo app now, you wouldn’t see much action at all. Nintendo didn’t have much success with Animal Crossing either.
The Build Up and Letdown
It has been speculated that users signed up for Miitomo in the millions simply because they were curious about what Nintendo might offer in the way of mobile gaming. Once that happened, the game just didn’t stick. It’s a bit of a sad story for Nintendo. Now, the company is pulling out the big guns - in the name of Zelda.
Where Miitomo isn’t really a ‘gamer’s game,’ Zelda is. People that have been playing Zelda since it originally came out will sign up for the mobile game purely out of curiosity (and a bit of nostalgia).
Nintendo still has to take the game in the right direction, though, in order to keep those that initially sign up. In this case, that could mean keeping the game as close to the original as possible. WSJ speculates that Zelda mobile will be out sometime during the second half of 2017. No further information has been reported by Nintendo yet.