Nintendo’s first mobile game wasn’t met with the reaction the company was hoping for when it packed out a press briefing room late Wednesday night and unveiled its next highly anticipated project, a free-to-play mobile game called Miitomo.
The real disappointment was that the company said the game wouldn’t launch until 2016. Nintendo originally planned to jump into the booming world of smartphone gaming by the end of 2015. The Japanese video game giant said the delay will help it focus on its existing console business this holiday shopping season.
On top of that, people still don’t seem to know what to make of Miitomo.
Nintendo didn’t release many details, but it doesn’t sound anything like the Mario-style games that made the company famous. Nintendo did tell reporters that Miitomo will be a free download with in-app purchases. It’s going to be a social game where players create an avatar, called a Mii, and then interact with other player’s characters.
We don’t know yet what the gameplay will look like, but it sounds similar to Tomodachi Life, a popular series Nintendo already makes.
Nintendo’s stock dropped about 10 percent immediately following the announcement, and DeNA, the company it’s partnering with on Miitomo, is down almost 15 percent.
That’s certainly not the kickoff Nintendo was looking for as it begins its next chapter in an entirely new gaming arena, but there’s still plenty of time to turn things around as the company will begin to generate hype over the coming months.
The launch represents a paradigm shift for Nintendo, which has a U.S. headquarters in Redmond, Wash. Not only will it be the first big push for new President Tatsumi Kimishima, who took over in September, but it will test the company’s ability to turn profits on the free-to-play business model that dominates the smartphone market.
