Fire Emblem Heroes Is Now Available for iOS and Android

As Fire Emblem Heroes launches on iOS and Android, it appears Nintendo has decided to ignore most of the world. While Fire Emblem Heroes – the company’s second smartphone game – will be launched in traditional markets, notable omissions in the list include untapped territories such as India and China.

According to the official site for the game, the list of countries planned for the Fire Emblem Heroes launch are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States.

Nintendo added that Fire Emblem Heroes may be released in additional countries in the future. This is in stark contrast to Super Mario Run that saw a global release, India included on the same day.

Rather, the Fire Emblem Heroes release harks back to how the company released Miitomo — the company’s social networking app. Countries such as India could only obtain it officially eight months after the rest of the world. If you can’t wait for the official Fire Emblem Heroes release in India and are on iOS, you can switch your country to one that the game is available in. On Android, you can sideload Fire Emblem Heroes similar to what most gamers needed to do for Pokemon Go.

It’s important to note that to play Fire Emblem Heroes on your iPhone or iPad, you’ll need a device with iOS 8 or above. As for Android, your smartphone or tablet should sport Android 4.2 or later and have 2GB RAM.

In our initial impressions, we found Fire Emblem Heroes to be an interesting take on the franchise which has seen a surge of popularity on the basis of character appearances in Nintendo fighting game Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U and the 3DS as well as two solid entries on the 3DS.

Hopefully, the wait for Fire Emblem Heroes to hit officially won’t be that long. Nonetheless, it does put a damper on the expectations of its fans. When Nintendo announced its foray into mobile we were hopeful that it would afford the company entry into markets such as China and India.

However, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Rather, it’s simply representative of how insular the Kyoto-based firm is to ground realities – the audience on smartphones doesn’t necessarily reside in its traditional markets.