Nintendo’s first mobile app Miitomo launches on March 17 in Japan

By Kris Wouk March 11, 2016

nintendo miitomo release date japan 1200x0 — Image used with permission by copyright holder

It was nearly a year ago when Nintendo first announced its partnership with DeNA and its strategy to begin producing games and apps for mobile devices. Now we’re about to see the very first fruits of that partnership come to the public.

We’ve known for some time that Miitomo, Nintendo’s social messaging app, and game of sorts, would be launching in Japan sometime this month, but today the company finally announced a concrete release date, saying that the game will launch starting March 17. Pre-registration for the game — which promises Platinum Points for My Nintendo Rewards members — is still open, and will remain open until March 16.

Miitomo is described by Nintendo as “a free-to-start communication application that helps friends share fun personal facts and interests,” with free-to-start being what any other company would call free-to-play. Not exactly a game, Miitomo is somewhat closer to something like Second Life, but with “Miis” instead of more realistic-looking characters, and a “welcoming social environment,” which the latter never could claim to be.

This is supposed to be the first of five titles to result from the partnership between Nintendo and DeNA, though details remain scarce on what to expect next. Once the full launch is complete, Miitomo will be available in a total of 16 countries, including the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and select parts of Europe, supporting eight languages.

Last month Nintendo opened up the ability to sign up for its new cross-platform Nintendo Account to users worldwide, after launching in Japan in December. Users who signed up for a new account or brought in their Nintendo Network ID were also able to pre-register for Miitomo. Fortunately, we shouldn’t have to wait two months until the game launches outside of Japan.

Nintendo hasn’t given exact release dates yet, but says that Miitomo will launch in the other nations mentioned above starting later this month.

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Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…

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Nintendo’s mobile games don’t get enough credit. While Nintendo had some undeniable hits like Pokémon Go and Fire Emblem Heroes, many consider the rest of its mobile efforts fairly underwhelming and even somewhat disappointing for a video game company of Nintendo’s stature. While nothing ever quite reached the high bar Pokémon Go set in 2016, Nintendo’s mobile games are a bit more influential than they get credit for.
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Nintendo’s mobile gaming efforts kicked off in the mid-2010s. Niantic created the AR game Pokemon Go, which quickly became a smashing success in 2016. In the six years since, the game has generated around 678 million installs and $6 billion in player spending, according to data from Sensor Tower.
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Meanwhile, other games like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Mario Kart Tour, Dr. Mario World, and Dragalia Lost launched, and while they’ve still made lots of money for Nintendo, most haven't matched the success of the most popular mobile titles. The biggest exception to this is Fire Emblem Heroes, a gacha game where players can summon classic Fire Emblem characters. It’s had over $1 billion in player spending alone as of June 2022 and is Nintendo’s “flagship title on the [mobile} platform,” according to Sensor Tower.
More recently, Nintendo tried to recapture the success of Pokemon Go with Niantic’s Pikmin Bloom, although that game has reportedly disappointed as well. Overall, it’s understandable why some people are surprised to see only a couple of surefire mobile hits from a company with the pedigree of Nintendo and consider it a side venture that never realized its full potential. If you look closely at the console games in these series that Nintendo put out since, though, it isn’t ignoring everything learned while making mobile games.
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Nintendo has the masterful ability to find the strongest elements of an idea, draw those out, and then expand upon them to create something uniquely memorable. We’ve seen it do this time and time again with subsequent entries of its flagship series, but it’s a mindset it has applied to its mobile games upon closer inspection.
As far back as 2018, Pokemon: Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee recognized the charm of not needing to battle a Pokemon to capture it, and incorporated that into a traditional RPG experience. More recently, items and mechanics like gardening and cooking from Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp made their way into Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was able to revive its live service offerings by repurposing the best tracks and assets from Mario Kart Tour.
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