Nintendo elaborates on its mobile games development

Regarding this subject, we announced our business alliance with DeNA on March 17. Each of our companies offers unique strengths, and we are confident that when combined, the synergies will enable us to compete strongly in the smart device space.

We will start the service for the first game application by the end of this calendar year. Internally at Nintendo, we have executed several organizational and personnel changes in order to properly operate the smart device business, and we will make further changes before the first release.

As we confirmed on March 17, all of our IP can be considered for a smart device game. On the other hand, since the game business on smart devices is already severely competitive, even with highly popular IP, the odds of success are quite low if consumers cannot appreciate the quality of a game. Also, if we were simply to port software that already has a track record on a dedicated game system, it would not match the play styles of smart devices, and the appropriate business models are different between the two, so we would not anticipate a great result. If we did not aim to achieve a significant result, it would be meaningless for us to do it at all. Accordingly, we are going to carefully select appropriate IP and titles for our smart device deployment.

Regarding the number of the titles, you may want to know that we will release approximately five titles by the end of the next fiscal year, which is the end of March 2017. You may think it is a small number, but when we aim to make each title a hit, and because we want to thoroughly operate every one of them for a significant amount of time after their releases, this is not a small number at all and should demonstrate our serious commitment to the smart device business.

We will strive to expand this business into global markets at a steady pace so that eventually we will entertain hundreds of millions of people all around the world. We are aiming to make this one of the pillars of Nintendo’s revenue structure.

That aside, Nintendo has also confirmed that Hiddeki Konno, the man behind Mario Kart, will be spearheading their mobile games initiative.

On the one hand, I am hopeful that Nintendo might manage to revitalize the stagnant and exploitation mobile gaming market, just as they did with the console gaming market all those years ago. On the other hand, I feel my heart sinking, as this seems to be a precursor to Nintendo's efforts slowly being focused towards mobile game development.

Oh, boy! Can't wait... /sarcasm

Just give me my video games-dedicated systems with a better online infrastructure and it's all good.

@nintendoboy16: Makes me a bit curious as to what you think of Iwata and the management currently.

Cool. Hope those games are successful, and this is the first step to 3rd party Nintendo

I'm not into mobile gaming but I don't have a problem with all that. Mobile game development is relatively cheap and probably won't affect other games development.

My worry now, is with everything Nintendo related up for grabs by mobile development, could they do damage to Nintendo's reputation with a bunch of half-assed mobile game?

There's a reason why nintendo announced the NX right after they announced their mobile plans and that was to quell all the "nintendo is going mobile only" nonsense

Nintendo won't go 3rd party, not even if things become a blowout success. Think of it this way, the huge profits from the mobile market which isn't that expensive to develop for would fund new games, consoles, heck it may even create a return of 3rd party as Nintendo could use the extra revenue garnered from mobile gaming to create deals with 3rd party devs. and publishers to port games if it came to that. Just because Nintendo dabbles in new things doesn't mean they'll lose their core focus. I remember Iwata saying the company would basically die before going 3rd party, people change of course, but he seems set to that path.

Well, my respect for him has dropped ever since he pulled that stunt. Granted, he still has a few ways to go, but oh boy did that take it down some.

I really hope he sticks to his guns on that. But of course, I can imagine the flanking the pro "Nintendo should go third party" camp must've gave.

this is the proof that the gaming industry of today has hitted the bottom of the wheel, the games now are just a cash grab attempt towards idiotic customers