Why Nintendo Changed Its Mind About Smartphone Games

Having been released last Wednesday, Nintendo’s new smartphone game Pokémon Go turned out to be an instant hit. According to numbers published by Similar Web, the game is on track to overtake Twitter in terms of daily active users and is already being used more heavily than popular messaging apps by its players. In response to the hype surrounding Pokémon Go, Nintendo’s stock price shot up by almost 25 percent during Monday’s trading in Tokyo, resulting in an $8 billion increase in the company’s market cap since the game’s release last week.

And to think that Nintendo dismissed the idea of making its own smartphone games for so long: It wasn’t until March of this year that the company owning so many beloved video game characters finally released its first game for Android and iOS devices. Today’s chart shows what may ultimately have changed the company’s mind about opening up to mobile devices: Since its peak in 2009, the company’s software sales declined by almost 80 percent. What better way to stop the bleeding than to bring Mario & Co. to billions of mobile devices out there?