Nintendo is not ditching mobile after all as it announces Pictonico

After last year’s random Fire Emblem mobile game announcement, Nintendo’s done it again with a surprise reveal of the WarioWare-esque Pictonico.

Back in 2020, it was reported that Nintendo had lost interest in making mobile games, and the following years only supported this given only one of those games was consistently successful (Fire Emblem Heroes) and there were few new releases besides Pikmin Bloom in 2021.

Nintendo did launch another Fire Emblem mobile game, Fire Emblem Shadows, last year, but it happened in the dead of night with zero fanfare, was met with a less than positive response, and has reportedly made barely any money.

And yet it looks as if this wasn’t some random one-off and Nintendo thinks there’s still opportunities to be found in the mobile sector as it has once again randomly announced a new mobile game called Pictonico.

The annoucement was made via the Nintendo Today app, although at least it wasn’t quite as late in the day as the recent Star Fox reveal.

As for what Pictonico actually is, it’s a minigame collection where all the games make use of photos you’ve taken on your phone. So, the faces of yourself, friends, and family will appear in the minigames.

Some examples seen in the trailer include stretching a person’s jaw to make them eat a cob of corn and unwrapping a mummy to reveal whoever is inside it.

The wacky and fast-paced nature of Pictonico immediately brings to mind WarioWare, which makes sense as WarioWare studio Intelligent Systems is listed as a co-developer.

Although that only begs the question of why Nintendo decided to make Pictonico its own thing and not at least slap the WarioWare branding on it, which could have helped generate further interest.

Especially since it could have positioned this as a successor to WarioWare: Snapped, which made use of the Nintendo DSi’s camera for its microgames. Although it only used your silhouette and wasn’t particularly fun to play.

Nintendo’s website explains that Pictonico has upwards of 80 minigames, but is free-to-start, meaning you can only access a demo of some of its minigames.

It mentions that you can buy volumes to access the full collection, but there’s no word on pricing yet. So, you won’t know how much Nintendo expects you to pay until the game’s launch on May 30.

This isn’t the first time Nintendo has offered a game that’s built around selfies. The Nintendo 3DS had Face Raiders, which had you shoot at photos of faces you took with the console’s camera.

However, that was a free piece of software that came installed on the 3DS, so it remains to be seen how many people are willing to pay real money for a similar experience.

Between this and Fire Emblem Shadows, a weird blend of the series’ typical strategy battles and Among Us-esque social deduction, it seems Nintendo is using the mobile platform for more experimental titles.

Aside from that, the only other Nintendo mobile releases in recent memory are the Hello, Mario and Hello, Yoshi apps, which are designed specifically for very young children and only let you interact with Mario and Yoshi’s faces – as inspired by the title screen of Super Mario 64.

There’s also Pokémon TCG Pocket, a mobile version of the Pokémon trading card game, but that’s handled by The Pokémon Company rather than Nintendo itself.

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