Nintendo Co Ltd may be a game industry veteran, but the Japanese company has just recently dipped its toes into the mobile market for the first time with its bizarre social media app, Miitomo. The app proved incredibly successful despite – or perhaps because of – Nintendo’s characteristic weirdness, and now the company is ready to follow it up with two new mobile games based on the Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing franchises, both of which will be free-to-play.

It is currently unclear what sort of in-app purchase model the new games will use, but Isao Moriyasu, CEO of DeNA Co Ltd, Nintendo’s mobile development partner, referred to the games as “free-to-start,” which could mean that players may be unable to progress past a certain point in the games without paying. This sort of free-to-play model is already used in many other games, including Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, which caps players at level 20 until they pay for the full game.

A payment model Nintendo would be more likely to use, however, would be to charge money for premium currency that could then be used to purchase in-game items and characters. For example, Nintendo may allow users to purchase furniture and other decorations in Animal Crossing, which already has its own in-game currency in the form of Bells.

What’s next for Nintendo mobile?

The Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing mobile games already announced, which means that Nintendo still has two more unannounced mobile games planned for release by the end of 2017.

Given that its next two games come from franchises that are already popular in the handheld market, there seems to be a strong possibility that the company could be looking to its DS and 3DS titles for inspiration on what games to release for smartphones.

Obviously the company has a huge library of valuable IPs to draw from, but with the games Nintendo has already chosen, it is clear that the company is looking for gametypes that already match the mobile gaming playstyle.

So what could be next for Nintendo’s mobile games? A smart choice would be something like the immensely popular The Legend of Zelda series in the same vein as Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, or perhaps another turn-based game such as its Paper Mario games.

Of course, neither of these games would work particularly well in a free-to-play model, and knowing Nintendo’s strange sensibilities, we could just be getting a mobile version of Nintendogs.

Photo by FaruSantos