Nintendo Entering The Mobile Department

Strike up the band, Nintendo has finally confirmed its entry into the mobile gaming market! Nintendo has announced an official partnership with Japanese mobile and online specialists DeNA, a tech giant that rose to its prominence on the strength of its smartphone games. Their agreement is as follows:

⦁ Joint development and operation of gaming applications for smart devices using Nintendo’s intellectual property, including its characters
⦁ Joint development of a new multi-device membership service that will span PCs, smartphones, tablets, Nintendo video games systems.
⦁ Nintendo will acquire 10 percent of DeNA’s issued shares for JPY 22 billion (US$181 million) while DeNA will acquire 1.24 percent of Nintendo’s issued shares for the same price

Now this doesn’t mean that we’ll be playing 3DS or WiiU games on our smartphones or iPads, rather Nintendo has announced that to maintain their quality in gaming experience that only new games that will be optimized for smart devices will be available.

But that also means that there’s no restrictions as to who Nintendo will throw in the fray. It appears that anyone and everyone from all their famous (or not so famous) franchises is up for use in this new partnership with DeNA. Both companies will be developing for the project but Nintendo will be in control of actual game development while DeNA will provide the online support necessary. 

Lastly, to emphasize that they’ve not given up on the console scene, Nintendo has also announced a new dedicated gaming console that will work alongside this online service. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata stated in a press conference in Tokyo that the newest console, codenamed NX, was still aways off but that they hoped to announce more details next year.

Nintendo and DeNA will also develop a cross-platform service that runs across smartphones, tablets, PCs, and Nintendo’s own devices; this is set to launch in fall of this year.