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Nintendo is often hesitant to explore industry trends. For better or worse, the company is known more for exploring new gameplay avenues than for following what other companies are doing.
One trend that the company had avoided until very recently was the pay-to-play model that has dominated cell phone games such as Candy Crush Saga. Pokémon Shuffle is Nintendo’s first attempt at following that particular business model, and it would seem that they’ve had quite a bit of success with it. The company announced today that the game has been downloaded over three million times since its release last month.
To celebrate the occasion, Nintendo is releasing a new challenge for the game, centered on the Pokémon Mega Blastoise. Top ranking players in the challenge will be rewarded with the Blastoisonite item for Mega Blastoise. The top 10,000 players in Europe, 20,000 in North America and 50,000 players in Japan will receive the item. The challenge runs from today until April 13.
As we pointed out when the title hit one million downloads, Nintendo has still not announced how much revenue the game has generated, given that the title is a free download. That said, however, it seems highly unlikely that the game is anything less than a financial success for the company.
Stay tuned to Nintendojo where we’ll have more information on how the game is performing in the near future!
Source: Nintendo Life
