Nintendo announced that it has entered a partnership with Japanese mobile game company DeNA to develop projects for smartphone gaming.
According to the two companies, the smartphone games will feature Nintendo IP, Wired reported. This means games based on popular Nintendo characters such as Mario or Zelda could arrive for smartphone devices.
The news about Nintendo entering the mobile gaming market came as a surprise since company president Satoru Iwata was previously against bringing Nintendo games to smart devices and tablets. For him, doing so could significantly hurt the sales and popularity of the company's gaming consoles, according to IGN.
However, during the presentation with representatives from DeNA on March 17, Iwata changed his tone regarding Nintendo games on mobile devices.
"Nintendo has decided to utilize smart devices aggressively," Iwata said in a press release according to Wired. "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."
"We are challenging ourselves to redefine what 'Nintendo platforms' mean," he added.
Iwata did not reveal the specific details regarding the future joint projects between Nintendo and DeNA but said gamers can expect to see at least one mobile game from the two companies sometime this year. The two companies will also launch an online membership service for various mobile devices.
He also emphasized that the company has no plans of porting all Nintendo IPs to mobile devices to prevent console sales from staggering.
In addition, to ensure that Nintendo's console department will continue to thrive, Iwata revealed that the company is currently working on a new gaming hardware dubbed as the NX, Kotaku has learned.
The executive noted that the new gaming system shows that Nintendo is still dedicated to developing new console-based games despite entering the mobile gaming industry. Iwata said that more information regarding the NX will be unveiled next year.
