Nintendo has announced a partnership with the publisher DeNA to bring its catalog of gaming IPs to mobile platforms.
Ever since the mobile market became a thing, pretty much every game maker and its proverbial uncle has bent over backwards trying to find some way to capitalize on its wide reaching and highly profitable audience. One of the most notable holdouts, of course, has been Nintendo. Up until last year, the famed game company had seemed fairly content to ignore that the market existed. It’s now been confirmed however, that Nintendo not only has plans for new mobile releases but is already putting them in motion.
Working with the Japanese mobile publisher DeNA, Nintendo intends to begin creating and publishing new games based in its beloved franchises for smart phones and mobile devices. The new games will developed “jointly” by the two companies to help leverage their individual strengths which Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata described as its IP catalog and DeNA’s extensive knowledge of the mobile market. He would go on to say that while “any Nintendo IP could be used” in the new partnership, the company doesn’t intend to cheat its customers with a series of poorly adapted ports.
“There are significant differences in the controls, strengths and weaknesses between the controllers for dedicated game systems and the touchscreens of smart devices,” said Iwata. “We have no intention at all to port existing game titles for dedicated game platforms to smart devices because if we cannot provide our consumers with the best possible play experiences, it would just ruin the value of Nintendo’s IP.” Nintendo and DeNA will also be working together to craft a new membership service replacing the now defunct Club Nintendo. The new service will “include multiple devices.”
Topping off all of this news, Iwata also confirmed that the company is in the process of developing a new “dedicated game platform” that it has code-named “NX.” While he wasn’t able to share anything else about the new machine, he hoped that its existence will reassure fans that Nintendo’s foray into the mobile market isn’t a move away from its traditional game business. Its new pursuit of mobile, he said, is just common sense. “Now that smart devices have grown to become the window for so many people to personally connect with society, it would be a waste not to use these devices.”
Source: Nintendo
