Mentioned just briefly before in a January 2014 Management Briefing, Nintendo has been working on establishing their entry into the mobile gaming market and has made their plans official early this morning.
Nintendo’s IP have been a sort of sacred establishment in the gaming industry. Nintendo rarely lets their characters be used outside of their gaming platform, even going so far as to block them from being played in ports of other games (such as preventing Link and Samus from appearing in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance).
Now, Nintendo Director Satoru Iwata has announced plans for his company to enter into a joint venture with mobile gaming company DeNA, owners of the Mobage platform. In the works is a new membership service that will bridge together WiiU, 3DS, PC, smartphones/tablets, and a new dedicated gaming system only referred to as “Codename NX.” Nintendo has stated that any and all of their IP could potentially be used, but Iwata had this to say about bringing existing games onto the platform:
Please also note that, even if we use the same IP on our dedicated video game systems and smart devices, we will not port the titles for the former to the latter just as they are. There are significant differences in the controls, strengths and weaknesses between the controllers for dedicated game systems and the touchscreens of smart devices. 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.
And, if I can talk a bit further about our game development plan, we will continue doing our best to develop dedicated game titles for our dedicated game hardware platforms just as we have been doing. For smart devices, even in the case where we utilize the same IP, we will create completely new game software that will perfectly match the play styles of smart devices.
Nintendo will be releasing their first mobile-centric title later this year. If you would like to read the entirety of Nintendo’s announcement to partner with DeNA and enter the mobile gaming market, Nintendo has released their official announcement and plans here.
Mark
March 17, 2015 at 4:01 PMDidn’t some big shot at Nintendo once say something to the effect of, “The day that Nintendo gets out of the console industry is the day that Nintendo gets out of the video game industry?” That statement might not turn out to be true. This could be the very beginning of a long, slow slide by Nintendo out of the console market and into third-party status.