Nintendo has delayed the Animal Crossing mobile game that was supposed to launch for Android devices in the coming weeks. The company announced the delay in its latest financial release published on Tuesday, adding that its first Animal Crossing mobile game won’t be released before the second quarter of the year, i.e. April at the earliest. Nintendo opted to delay the upcoming game due to the fact that it already has two other mobile releases in the works, as Fire Emblem Heroes is launching on Thursday while the Android port of Super Mario Run will be hitting the market in March.
The wording of Nintendo’s financial report suggests that the company’s mobile division will already have its hands full with these two releases which will reportedly demand a high degree of maintenance during their launch periods seeing how both games will require an online connection to play. Due to that state of affairs, the Japanese entertainment company opted to push back the release of the Animal Crossing mobile game. These latest developments suggest that Nintendo was perhaps too ambitious when initially announcing its 2017 lineup of mobile games seeing how all release windows were already confirmed and subsequently delayed last fall.
Nintendo’s first Animal Crossing Android game was initially announced last April as a part of the company’s push into the mobile games market. While the Kyoto-based company has been reluctant to develop mobile games for many years due to the fear such releases will devalue its IPs, it recently gave in and hired Niantic Labs to develop Pokemon GO. Seeing how that augmented reality game was a huge hit, Nintendo was adamant to speed up its mobile releases and generate additional revenue, but its ambitions are seemingly growing faster than its operations. While Super Mario Run wasn’t as successful as Pokemon GO, Nintendo is still putting a larger focus on its mobile strategy which is now meant to complement the company’s console business, increase brand awareness, and generate additional profits without intruding on Nintendo’s core business. The company’s next mobile game titled Fire Emblem Heroes is scheduled to hit the Google Play Store on Thursday, February 2.