Fire Emblem Shadows makes just $353,000 in two months

• Fire Emblem Shadows has made $353,000 in two months, less than 1% of what Heroes achieved.
• After Heroes showed Fire Emblem's potential on mobile, the latest entry has opted for a different genre and monetisation model, and is yet to have much impact.

Fire Emblem Shadows has generated just $353,000 in its first two months on Google Play and the App Store.

According to AppMagic estimates, this was less than 0.5% of the earnings Fire Emblem Heroes achieved in its equivalent launch period. The 2017 gacha title made $77.6 million in its first two months.

Shadows marks Nintendo’s first new mobile game in six years. The title was shadow dropped on September 25th with limited marketing.

While Fire Emblem Heroes remains Nintendo’s only billion-dollar mobile game, this follow-up title hasn't tapped as deeply into the brand, instead framed as a spinoff in a different genre.

A social deduction game rather than a turn-based strategy RPG, Shadows also has a different monetisation model to Heroes, relying predominantly on season pass sales. Evidently, this has resulted in smaller initial returns.

Leveraging a legacy?

Fire Emblem Heroes and Shadows have both found their most lucrative market in Nintendo’s home country, Japan. The region is responsible for 42% of Shadows’ revenue thus far, or $149,000.

The US is both games’ second-biggest market, followed by Canada.

Despite this similarity in top markets, Shadows’ reliance on season pass sales has given its install base less to spend on than Heroes’ frequent new additions to its gacha. This led Shadows to peak at just $20,000 on September 26th, one day after launch, before quickly falling to four figures per day.

Player spending briefly climbed again early in Shadows’ second month with its next season pass, required to purchase to unlock the game’s third legacy character, Corrin. However, daily spending with this update peaked at just $10,000 on October 29th.

The lowest daily spending was merely $340 on November 16th.

On a weekly basis, spending fell for three consecutive weeks until the second season pass released, and has now begun to fall again.

Meanwhile, in Fire Emblem Heroes’ first two months, spending peaked at $1.1m on February 10th, 2017 and troughed at $504,000 on March 6th, meaning its worst day was still 25-times more lucrative than Shadows’ best.

Heroes emphasised main series gameplay and spending on legacy characters immediately upon its launch, with 95 returning characters included at the time. During its first two months, 20 more returning characters were introduced and featured in its gacha, further encouraging series veterans to spend in-game for a new chance to play with old characters.

Tomorrow, as Fire Emblem Shadows enters its third month, its third season pass will introduce Veronica as only its fourth returning character.

Notably, Veronica was originally introduced as the antagonist of Heroes and has become popular enough with mobile fans to transition from the gacha to a main series Switch title in Fire Emblem Engage - suggesting Heroes’ value to Nintendo has grown beyond a direct revenue generator into a valuable marketing wing.

Whether any original Shadows characters reach this status, considering the game’s currently limited reach and revenue, remains to be seen.