Nintendo, while aggressively litigious, do so to maintain the value and exclusivity of their IP.
Their games also never go on sale, and all sell really well over time, unlike many releases from other publishers.
The result is that Nintendo are able to release a solid cadence of high quality, first party games free of other forms of aggressive monetisation, maintaining the value of the games as art.
They just released a gatcha-style pokemon TCG for mobile a month ago, and they’ve released a bunch of them previously based on most of their big IPs. They focus those on mobile instead of their consoles is the only difference.
Playing the devil advocate here but I don’t think these games on mobile generate that much revenue compared to the main titles + console sales
They absolutely do. Some of the biggest whales are those that play on mobile.
Mobile games yes, but the nintendo’s games? They are that popular? At least in my country I don’t see much of them here.
I watched a 50 year old middle-management-looking gentleman on a train in Japan pull cards in the Pokemon TCG mobile game for like a full 15 minutes when I was in Japan a few months ago. That game has a death grip there
Ok they are probably making a ton of money with that too, in my bubble these games are so unpopular, barely saw people playing or talking about the TCG or the MOBA one, the Yu-gi-oh one is so more popular here that is not even a competition.