Nintendo launching five smartphone games by 2017, one out this year

While many companies are embracing mobile gaming with open arms, Nintendo has been a bit reluctant to enter the scene. However, Nintendo, with their recent partnership with DeNA, is now ready to jump in.

Plans are to release one game by the end of this year. Nintendo won’t just been releasing a single game, though. Immediately after the company’s 2014 earnings, CEO and President Satoru Iwata said that they plan on launching five mobile titles by March 2017.

“You may think it is a small number,” said Iwata, “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.”

Keep in mind that these games won’t just be ports from much-loved console titles–they’ll be entirely new games designed to function on smartphones and tablets.

“Even with highly popular IP, the odds of success are quite low if consumers cannot appreciate the quality of a game,” he said. “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.”

Of course, we have no idea what Nintendo plans on bringing to the mobile platform. For now, we’ll wait patiently to see what innovations Nintendo has up their sleeve for the mobile industry. However, this is great news overall from the company, as Android has been taking over Nintendo’s market share. Maybe this move will provide them with more growth.

What Nintendo game would you like to see on the smartphone? A Yoshi version of Temple Run? Let us know in the comments.

source: Nintendo
via: The Verge

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