…and to boot, they’ll feature some of our favorite characters!
Nintendo is teaming up with Japanese mobile game company DeNA (get it?) to develop smartphone games featuring some of our favorite Nintendo characters. This new mobile franchise will become a multi-device online membership service.
In an announcement made today:
Nintendo and DeNA intend to jointly operate new gaming applications featuring Nintendo IP, which they will develop specifically for smart devices.
Furthered in a Q&A session during the announcement, Nintendo plans to release at least one title this year.
What does this mean for our Nintendo games and franchises we love? Well, good things if you’re a fan of expanding the titles or lore of the characters.
This partnership looks to develop new, original content for mobile devices instead of just porting old titles over. Some of the titles will be solely developed by Nintendo (probably games that would feature secured franchise characters like Mario, Link, Zelda, Pokemon), and other titles will be joint projects.
Together, Nintendo & DeNA will develop a new software platform that will support various platforms ranging from PCs, smartphones, tablets, and yes, even Nintendo’s own hardware devices. The new multi-device membership service that will utilize this software is looking for release as early as Fall of 2015. Support for this service also looks to extend to Nintendo’s newly revealed next-generation concept.
Adding to this conversation, President Iwata said:
“Also, until now, when we said, ‘platform,’ it meant a specific video game platform. Now that we are going to release games on smart devices and make use of globally widespread PCs and smart devices for our new membership service, we would like to offer more consumers with software that is suited to their tastes. In other words, we are challenging ourselves to redefine what ‘Nintendo platforms’ mean.”
This membership service that is referenced is what is replacing the essentially defunct Club Nintendo loyalty program.
This announcement comes as a bit of a surprise to most Nintendo fans as Iwata has been a longstanding opponent of releasing Nintendo characters and games to mobile devices, fearing that releasing such core franchise games like Mario, Zelda, or even Pokemon, could have a terrible impact on the 3DS sales.
Iwata has since been made aware that gaming hardware is looking to be losing the edge on mobile gaming.
… with the spread of smart devices, we have increasingly heard a variety of opinions on the future of the dedicated video game system business, and in particular relatively pessimistic ones. We lost the balance of revenue and expenses as the era of the super strong yen occurred during the transition periods from Nintendo DS to Nintendo 3DS and from Wii to Wii U, and we were not able to make these platform transitions as smoothly as we had expected.
Iwata has previously mentioned his interest in developing Nintendo themed apps for smart devices, such as a Mii App.
Earlier this year, Nintendo did test the waters of mobile gaming with the release of Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition, a Super Mario Bros. mobile puzzle game from the Puzzle & Dragons series on the 3DS.
What are your thoughts on this news, fans? Is Nintendo making the right move? Tell us in the comments below!
