While Miitomo will without a doubt be able to cover its production costs, it is, by design, unable to access the largest part of the mobile market.

The app attempts to obtain small amounts from a large amount of people, but cannot capitalize suffiecently on any developping addiction to the game.

Top grossing apps generally target a small amount of people, unable to control their addiction. These have to give the player options to continuously progress, (for which one has to pay for), options which are objectively better in the game than what you currently have. People with personality issues (self-esteem, etc...) will then be tempted to spend increasing amounts to somehow distinguish themselves from the masses, and gain false recognition. A well designed game will temporarily let you feel a sense of achievement, and progressively match you up with people equally having purchased the same options, which regives incensitive to spend further amounts. A cognitive bias that the person has against losing money (having already spent a certain amount in the game, people have difficulty abandonning their investments, and can be tricked into spending even greater sums.)

This buisness model can quite frequently get thousands of dollars from the target population. Miitomo, on the other hand, will find it hard to get much more than 10 out of anyone. The problem is that after a purchase, the customer is satiated. The costumes that you have are objectively identical in value. The cognitive bias against loss will, in this case, quite in the contrary, encourage the user to buy nothing further for some time, as the person will attempt to justify the value of the purchase by using the costume longer. 

Thus, it is quite impossible for the app ever to reach the top grossing spots of the mobile market, matter not the popularity. If Nintendo entered the buisness to get their share of the massive amounts currently circulating, a drastic change in the nature of the purchase options will need to be made in upcoming games.

Discuss.

Miitomo is not about profitability, it will be a platform/app to promote Nintendo most famous IPs, new consoles like the NX, etc. Basically, to strengthen the Nintendo brand. So I think that their intention is to expand the Miitomo user base and try to bring them into the Nintendo gaming world.

I was surprised to see that Miitomo is in the top 100 in profits right now, though (I think I've read in USA?). With in-game money you have enough to buy a lot of cool stuff.

I don't think Miitomo was ever intended to be a super profitable app in itself. It's designed to make you sign up for MyNintendo and it's a good marketing device. The microtransactions are merely an afterthought to get whatever money they can get out of it, and it seems like it's doing a pretty good job so far in that department.

The sole purpose of the app is to pretty much help promote their new MyNintendo service.

Maybe they'll focus more on profits with a few select apps as they get more deep with the mobile market.

And this is why I don't play phone games.

In mobile market 3% people all downloaded users spend money for the free app. So installbase matters. The app is boring and doesn't have long lasting value. As for marketing. Lol. Who will buy a 3ds after playing miitimo? No one. Nintendo needs to make better game next time.

Like others said miitomo 's main focus isn't profit, but they could have make a ton of money with microtransactions if they wanted.

Yeah, right, problem is that Miitomo is going through updates so we don't really know which strategy Nintendo is planning to do with the app (in the meantime, they're expanding its user base). So, how about no jumping to conclusions? Also, I can tell you for my personal experience that is far for boring, me and my friends are having tons of laughs with the app. Though obviously it's not for everyone (nothing is). It's hard to measure its lasting value, so I'll take a "wait and see" approach.

Also, there's some early statistics that points that Miitomo is above average retention rate, so that's encouraging if we're talking about lasting value.

https://www.similarweb.com/blog/trending-u-s-apps-march-2016

Found it.

I don't think they're going for profitability. There's no ads in Miitomo, nor is there a real (read: fake) sense of progression trying to hook in those with compulsive personalities. They're not going to devalue the brand like that, it seems. Instead they start off by literally paying the player for continuing to play.

This app has exactly three purposes: To kickstart My Nintendo in a meaningful way (it has); to draw brand confidence in Nintendo on mobile (it has, due to the genuine avoidance of scammy mobile practices and encouragement); and to boost visibility for non-users (it has, more on that in a sec).

Miitomo is a meme machine. I've seen it all over reddit, trending on Twitter, and on a bunch of sites that don't cover gaming often. It doesn't matter how much they make off microtransactions, because this app has gone viral in probably exactly the way they'd hoped.

You admitted. If it's ain't for everyone then it won't reach everyone. Plus in the app market there are tons of better games. It doesn't matter what Nintendo is planning (do you admit that the game is incomplete that will be completed with updates?). Btw me and my friends aren't having fun. Fact many of my friends don't know the existence of the app. To each his own.