The Rise and Fall of Nintendo’s Miitomo: Why Downloads Don’t Matter

Thanks for the comment - I'm part of the team here at SMI and did a little work on this post.

We look at engagement and churn because they're largely independent of genre, or if you're even a game, for that matter - those metrics are used to evaluate to SaaS companies, websites, even service businesses. This is because those metrics a proxy for whether your customers want what you're selling.

Certain categories of apps (and subcategories of games) have different averages for engagement and retention, but overall more is better for both. Candy Crush and Miitomo are similar in that they're light, broad-appeal social games (compared to Clash, a harder core game). Yet the metrics of the King games are more similar to each other than Candy Crush and Miitomo are.

App store rank is mostly a function of download velocity. Downloads tell you nothing about the forward prospects of a game. Miitomo fell in the rankings as the initial attention wore off, but if users were sticking around it could have been the start of a new powerhouse franchise.

Revenue isn't related to downloads as only people who use your app have the opportunity to give you money. This the reason we look at active users.

We looked at revenue internally, but it's not a particularly interesting story. Most games settle at a level of revenue-per-active-user and don't move all that much over time. So revenue is dependent on your active users.

Definitely open to any other feedback if you think there's something else we should look at: intelligence AT surveymonkey

It should have had the ability to add friends over SMS from day one. I downloaded it on day one and my sister did too. However, since I have Android and she has iOS, the methods it launched with to add friends didn't work. If I could have added my sister as a friend, I probably would've been more interested in continuing to play miitomo.

That behavior is the case with every social network. (which is what Miitomo is categorized; it is not in the Gaming category)

I think if it were actually a game things might be different. Miitomo is just a social toy with a strange mini game that can be played to win clothing.