Nintendo continues its push onto mobile devices with Fire Emblem: Heroes, releasing sometime today on both iOS and Android. This comes after the mega success of Niantic Labs' Pokemon GO, as well as the more qualified success of Nintendo's own Super Mario Run, which came out in December. Fire Emblem: Heroes gives the mobile treatment to a franchise well-known among the Nintendo faithful, but not quite as iconic as properties like Mario or Zelda. Unlike Super Mario Run, it's being billed as truly free to play, and so it will be interesting to see how Nintendo manages a monetization strategy it still doesn't have much experience with.
As of right now, I'm not seeing it inside the app store app on either iPhone or iPad, but it appears to have already been released in Europe and Japan. Hopefully it arrives in North America soon, and we'll update you when that happens.
Like the main line games, Fire Emblem: Heroes is a turn-based tactical strategy game, only streamlined for quicker play sessions and touch controls. The free to play system comes by way of a stamina meter that controls how often you can fight -- like most games of its kind, you can spend money to fight more often. We'll have more thoughts when we get to spend some time with the title, but I'm most interested in how well the depth translates to a smaller screen, and to what degree this title will be aimed at more casual or hardcore players.
I wouldn't expect this to be a massive phenomenon, but that might be okay. Nintendo led it's mobile development push with its most recognizable character, and didn't do a great job with it: a massive publicity push before release still led to confusion due to questionable design choices, and it became clear that while Nintendo had mastered the moment-to-moment gameplay of a touch based game, it still hadn't been able to figure out the overarching structures of a mobile title. A slightly less well known series like Fire Emblem takes the pressure off a little bit, and might give the company an opportunity to fine tune its approach with a smaller but more dedicated audience.
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