Japanese newspaper The Nikkei reports that Nintendo will allow smartphone users to download and play Wii U demos on their phones.
Earlier this month, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said the company was considering expanding into the smartphone sector. According to a report from The Nikkei, one of the largest newspapers in Japan, Nintendo will be doing this by using smartphone apps to market its console games, and will go so far as to provide downloadable “mini-game” demos of Wii U titles that users can play on their Android and/or iOS devices.
The reasoning behind the move is reportedly to give smartphone-only players a taste of the experience without making the actual game available on non-Nintendo devices, hopefully converting these users into Nintendo customers.
The Nikkei also writes that Nintendo will use smartphones to expand its potential user base by spreading information (such as videos, screenshots, and the aforementioned demos) about new game releases via some kind of official smartphone app.
The report adds that all Nintendo smartphone content will be completely free, and that the company currently has no plans to bring paid or “freemium” games to mobile devices.
The Nikkei is a fairly reputable newspaper, but just in case you’re doubting it, it claims that Nintendo will officially release all of this information on Thursday, so we won’t have to wait too long to see how accurate the report is.
I’d like to add that the report seems even more credible when you consider that Nintendo was offering “professional-use smartphone-to-Wii U conversion software” to app developers last year. It was a puzzling move at the time, but when you consider how such software could be used to bring Wii U demos to smartphones, it makes sense.
Source: The Nikkei (Japanese) via Dr. Serkan Toto
