When Nintendo first launched Miitomo, many were initially skeptical about their decision to launch a game with unknown characters, but given that it bears the Nintendo branding, gamers gave it a shot and according to reports, it managed to bag 1.4 million downloads in the first 4 days of its release in the US.Nintendo then went on to confirm last month that the game had more than 10 million players around the world, all of which seems to indicate that Nintendo had a successful app on their hands, or did they? According to stats obtained by Survey Monkey, it actually shows that Miitomo is starting to lose players at a rather alarming pace.
According to them, Miitomo’s weekly churn rate is at 48%, meaning that about half the players who play the game probably won’t open the game the next week. The number of times players play the game every week is also rather low at 2.3 times, versus more popular titles like Candy Crush and Clash Royale whose average days played per week are at 3.3 and 4.2 times respectively.
As Survey Monkey notes, it seems that things will only go down from here simply because the effect will snowball. They write, “Miitomo is a social game. Much of the value of the game comes from the presence of your friends. Why dress your mii up in a cool new outfit if there is no one to see it? So as the game declines things get worse and worse for the remaining players who end up living in a ghost town.”
Perhaps future updates will include new features that will see players return for it, but given that this is Nintendo’s first official mobile game, we guess we can give them a pass. Hopefully their upcoming Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem titles will fare much better.