Nintendo’s free-to-play mobile release Fire Emblem Heroes has experienced a significant slump in player spending last month. According to Sensor Tower Store Intelligence data, the game only reached around 66 percent of its average monthly earnings in November. Since arriving on mobile platforms in February 2017, Heroes has raked in $21 million per month, whereas this November was down to $13.8 million worldwide. That’s a decrease of roughly 19 percent year-over-year.
Sensor Tower links this decline in player spending to the release of Dragalia Lost, which was launched in September. Nintendo’s new free-to-play mobile release, developed by Cygames, has manged to outperform Fire Emblem in both October and November. Just recently it surpassed $50 million in player spending after 70 days. It’s quite an impressive feat for a game that is currently only available in five select territories compared to one that has been released in 43 locations.
The revenue for Fire Emblem Heroes in November predominantly came from Japan - which accounted for close to 60 percent in terms of player spending. 28 percent of this spending came from the US. To date, the game is estimated to have grossed $465 million worldwide across the App Store and Google Play.
Did you spend any money on Fire Emblem Heroes in the month of November? Have you played or downloaded Dragalia Lost? Tell us below.
[source sensortower.com]
Comments 38
I guess this is the time to start expanding FEH into other regions of the world but whatever, let the game die if Nintendo wants it to.
Good. Don't let IS become complacent and let them actually feel the pain for putting in yet another pair of Corrin alts, and yet another Camilla alt.
That and the ridiculous powercreep.
Prepare for it to go down further now that Smash is on everyone's brain.
Maybe if the banners weren't so focused on pushing Fates and Awakening and they'd cut the powercreep down a bit id spend more. I'm not dropping money for things I don't want that are only gonna be obsolete literally a week later with a new banner. Im sick of Fates and Awakening as it is.
@Yasaal It's already in 44 countries.
I consider Fire Emblem one of my absolute favorite series of games around. But this game is just a money grab. It's like that Fate game, and Kannecolle and other "gatcha" styles of games. Where people are spending money for JPEGs of anime girls and guys.
I admit I played it for a bit, and spent more money than I want to admit on it, because I do adore these characters. But they are just pictures of the characters with like, 1-2 lines of text and zero interaction among them. That's not what I like about Fire Emblem.
Makes sense. They just released Super Fire Emblem Brothers - Ultimate.
Lol at some here thinking it's because of "alts" (the norm of gacha games) or more focus on particular titles. FE Heroes is just not delivering in overall content as much as it did before there's nothing worth logging back into besides pull a character, free feathers, the new grails and Orbs that's it in subpar modes in a already water down mobile FE game. Its coming to its 3rd year soon it's expected that it would slow down the more it goes on with lack of much needed good changes or qol features that other mobile games do WAY better.
Everyone is quick to blame the Fates alts for this issue. I think the problem is more on FEH's extreme lack of effort in November. Basically nothing happened, and all they did besides the Fates summon was focus on their OCs, the other summon they had is the first summon to only have TWO characters in it. And I personally skipped all the dialogue in forging bonds because I don't care about those characters. Say what you want about the Fates banner but at least it had effort in it's concept, a new character, and a tempest trial. After that banner, the rest of the month until now was boring, I've hardly even opened the game this month.
One aspect of FEH for me, and maybe us, is whether there’s any endgame. Book III took a looong time to make. I miss the days when it felt like I had a long way to go. So is story mode important to games like this - or not?
I expect FEH will get a new wave of interest when Three Houses releases on Switch next year. That will also provide a context for new content - it’s a win-win. But there’s little to do until then but try to keep the existing player base from dwindling too much.
I mean they need to do something with the formula! People are getting tired of doing voting gauntlets, blessed Gardens, Grand Conquest, and grinding the training Zone. It doesn't help that they gacha system hardly ever works in your favor and you keep getting the same people you've been getting for over a year. If they introduced new crappy three-stars or four star people then at least people would have new characters to play with but every time I pull I get a Lissa or a Barte, so it's getting old. Even thr aether raids can't save this thing. I've been using the same powerful group for half a year now and I can't pull anybody who makes my powerful group obsolete. The game just is suffering power creep and with the new langrisser coming out I think people are just ready to move on.
@Jugdral Yes. I am blaming the Fates alts for them not getting my money. People are sick of fates. We're talking about their loss of revenue in this post which units (orbs) are what you spend money on in this game. It doesn't matter if the tempest trial and idea behind the characters was executed well (which it was very well done) if people are sick of them. I love Fire Emblem but my favorite characters come from PoR and RD and between those 2 games I have essentially 12 or 13 different characters to work with compared to Fates freaking 44. I'm not spending money on things I already have and things I don't like. However, that's not even half the issue with this app. The game itself is boring and the powercreep is idiotic. They've done this to themselves. Arena needs a rehaul, story missions won't be added until later when the new chapter comes out, units are locked behind a paywall so people won't drop money unless they absolutely have to, there's no reason to have a friends list in this game because it does nothing, and there are 3 game modes that are all the same thing but executed differently (Grand Conquest, Rival Domains, and Relay Defense. And we all know relay defense is trash)
The game needs an overhaul in general. Aether raids was a good start but way more needs done if they plan on keeping this alive. And they need to cut back on the powercreep. That in itself is forcing people away. No one one wants a unit who's just going to be outdated in 2 weeks.
I would like to say it's because they have been taking the game in the wrong direction, but it's probably because most of the new hero banners were OC.
For me personally, I'm upset with the bst powercreep with Surtr and the Corrins as the most recent examples. As well as the lack of effort put forth compared to other games that make far less money is just pathetic.
Didn't play this one too much anyways. I would've been interested to try out Dragalia Lost if it was released here... before Smash Ultimate. Too late now.
@Sithra The loud minority is sick of Fates. We do not hear the opinions of people who are quiet. And there are many people who still like Fates. In the CYL polls, yes, a non-fates character won overall, but in the top 100 result for both polls, Fates and Awakening have the most characters listed. FEH listens to the results of that poll, so it's no surprise they keep using those games, while making the same top characters from the other games more alts. But that is not my point. My point is that this month as a whole was very lazy for FEH, so it's no surprise that their revenue was weak. Very few events, no seasonal, two 'new character' summons that didn't have new characters, and a legendary hero that is, again, not a new character. I do agree with you that they need to change the game in a big way, as it's getting easy for people to get tired of it. And I also agree that this power creep is awful. But I believe the problem with this month was more from the extreme lack of effort compared to usual. Which, imo, seemed to be stalling for book 3, for whatever reason.
I've dabbled in both games, but ultimately uninstalled FEH and kept DL.
Although I stopped playing FEH seriously awhile ago, I haven’t even touched it since DL came out. I’ll play again when Book 3 comes out I guess but that’s probably it.
Dragalia is the new kid on the block. FEH definitely requires more thoughts and has more lasting appeal compared to Dragalia at current stage in my opinion.
Took a while, but people on the lower end of the cranium spectrum, finally realize this is Fire Emblem in name only and aimed at whales. Want a lot of of great content like a real Fire Emblem game? Tough you have to keep spendin money.
FEH spent way too much time focusing on releasing new summons and barely any time on the story. It took months just to finish Book II because of how little the devs released the chapters. It didn’t help that they went with the cliché lets kill off the new main character, Fjorm, because we need plot development.
I'm not spending any money if I don't get the character(s) I want; I can just grind for Orbs.
@TheWPCTraveler So over Corrin. That 'Adrift' banner was just crap. The Tempest Trial 'Before We Met..' was like Fire Emblem on LSD.
@Sithra did you realize there are also 5 Lyn?
They are clearly losing money due to the slew of content they keep releasing.
I don't know of it's the real reason but Fire Emblem Heroes has had a pretty aggressive power creep lately and it's pretty stupid.
I've had some fun with this game but haven't spent a cent on it yet and don't plan to. I just picked it up a couple of months ago and, after the initial "This is fun!" burst, have found it to be kind of meh. It's definitely suited to shorter five minute sessions for me....And I'm starting to need to grind more. I'm not too fond of the unit roulette but have picked up some fairly decent ones. Now if only Hector would move more than once space per turn....
They need to update the title screen with more lords. Add Celica, Sigurd, Leif, Micaiah, and Edelgard already!
@SCAssassin Highly doubt there are 44 countries in the world, that's not even half.
@Heavyarms55 I have to disagree. FE my fav franchise either. But the game is very fair compared to other mobiles gatchas.
The only real problem is the IV system which can (and will) cripple your rare 5 stars!
Let's see if the 3.0 can renew the game
@Yasaal But is it leaving the game to die.
@SCAssassin There is a reason this article was posted.
The price of Fire Emblem Heroes is hellishly expensive. I do not mind spending money on fun games. I have spent a lot of money on Hearthstone over the years. But the price of Fire Emblem Heroes easily five times that of Hearthstone. It simply does not pay to invest money in it.
The unit's genetics system guarantees that the investment needed to make sure you get all the characters and that they are playable will be disproportionate.
And then there are the obvious and crappy hooks, like the thousand versions we have of Hector while we have not yet seen a Shinon, for example.
I really like Fire Emblem Heroes but in my opinion more than a game is a cheeky money-thrower.
@Yasaal Because it's being connected to a shared userbase with Dragalia Lost.
@SCAssassin Yep, they're just trying to pass it off as an excuse even though they know what can be done to boost FEH sales, or maybe they still are fools enough to not know how to gauge and remarket products to continue the flow of sales by tapping into markets they haven't yet set foot on.
@Yasaal It's... it's not even Nintendo or IS saying this, this is an analyst firm. Did you even read this article.
@SCAssassin I did, and I don't see any statement from Nintendo meaning everything is a guess. From what these analysts are predciting to both my and your analyses.
When there's no information people can't do anything but guess what will happen, similar to what happened with the Switch when it was the NX, but the difference being the Switch is available everywhere along with it's software too while NintendoMobile's games aren't because ???
@Yasaal Who are you even talking about anymore. This is the course of this discussion.
You: They're leaving this game to die.
Me: They are not.
You: What do you think the article is about then.
Me: Correlating the lower end profits of November with the release of a large mobile IP by Nintendo.
You: Yeah that's their excuse, they know what they can do to fix everything but they're dumb.
Me: Sensor Tower is the one correlating patterns, there are no excuses from anyone.
You: Well there's no info so all we can do is speculate.
Like what was that all for even. And now you're just comparing the availability of the Switch with the availability of mobile games???
Like officially, Nintendo has official distributors to less than the amount of countries than FEH does, and FEH is officially available in countries the Switch has to be resold to by licensed importers. Does that mean the Switch is being left to die?
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