January 25th will go down as the saddest day in the history of man, as it is the day Nintendo announced they’ll be shutting down Miitomo. Miitomo, if you don’t remember, was Nintendo’s first foray into the mobile market, where you could dress up your Miis in random outfits (mine only wore underwear and cat ears, magnificent) and take pictures of them, and also ask your IRL friends’ Miis question, to which the Miis would speak out your answer in whatever ridiculous voice you chose to give them. While it certainly wasn’t much of a game, but rather more of a social networking app, it was certainly very Nintendo and was novel and fun until everyone stopped logging in entirely.
The app was only released in March of 2016, and with full closure occurring on May 9th, the app only had a two-year life. In-app purchases are being stopped today, and a refund will be sent for all unused purchases of the in-game currency.
The title certainly had a strong user base in the beginning, but as time went on, more and more users slowly stopped opening the app, and it eventually waned in popularity. While the app gained 10 million users in under a month of release, it didn’t last long. With Nintendo’s shift to bringing their first party franchises to mobile phones such as Mario and Fire Emblem in unique ways, rather than new experiments such as Miitomo, the move to close the app makes sense. Still, the app certainly led to some fun times while it lasted.