Fire Emblem Heroes is the first Nintendo mobile game to reach $1 billion in revenue

The commitment to Nintendo mobile games has not been as good as expected, but even so the company has managed to reap some financial success. The biggest example is Fire Emblem Heroes, which according to the analysis firm Sensor Tower has managed to generate more than 1,000 million dollars in revenue since its launch in February 2017. It is a record for Nintendo, since until now none of its titles for iOS and Android had reached this figure.

Thanks to its 1,000 million dollars, Fire Emblem Heroes represents 54.5% of the income that Nintendo has obtained so far through its mobile games. Mario Kart Tour, the Japanese company’s latest release on iOS and Android, ranks as the second most profitable title with 282 million dollars, while Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, whose debut dates back to 2017, ranks third with 281.6 million dollars. The three titles coincide in betting on the model free-to-play.

The most lucrative market for Fire Emblem Heroes is Japan at $540.6 million, or more than half of the total. It is followed by the United States with 32.4% of revenue and Canada with 3.2%.

Outside the podium of income we have Dragalia Lost, a role-playing game developed in collaboration with Cygames that has not officially arrived in Europe and whose servers will close this year, with 168 million, followed by Super Mario Run and Dr. Mario World with 87 and 14 million dollars, respectively. The case of Super Mario Run is different from the rest, since it is a one-time payment game that leads the Nintendo download list with 310.7 million installations. Fire Emblem Heroes is fourth with 17.8 million.

Fire Emblem Heroes is a game free-to-play with model porridge, a form of monetization that is proving to be very profitable on mobile thanks to the income it generates over time. miHoYo knows this well with Genshin Impact, which earns $1 billion every six months. Super Mario Run is a premium title and possibly Nintendo’s biggest bet in the mobile sector, but its 87 million dollars, which are not few, pale next to what a game brings gacha free to play popular.

To have a new sample of how well the gachYou only have to look at the income of the first quarter. During this period Fire Emblem Heroes entered 29 million dollars despite only adding 121,000 new downloads, while Super Mario Run contributed a million dollars.