Nintendo is gearing up for its first game made for smartphone platform. The first game will be out towards the end of this year and many more games will be following the trail thereafter, from the house of Nintendo. During a meeting with investors, Nintendo’s CEO and president Satoru Iwata, revealed that the company is planning to release around five smartphone games by March 2017.
Satoru said,“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,” he said.
Iwata also emphasized that Nintendo will not jump right in to the mobile market, instead it will take one step at a time, and won’t be porting existing titles to smartphones. To explain it, Iwata said,“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,” he said.
Nintendo will still be producing its own gaming consoles; and a forthcoming console with a codename NX is already under development. The console maker company also expects that this step will make the smartphone users aware of its IP and it might gradually result in them wanting to explore more of Nintendo’s premium product-line and consoles.
The company has collaborated with DeNA, and is developing a cross-platform membership service, which will be compatible with both mobile devices and its own gaming consoles. Moreover, Iwata also revealed that the company has hit 10.5 million Amiibo figurines sales globally, he also said that NFC-equipped characters continued to sell quickly even after the holiday season was over. Taking a que from good sales, the company is producing more units of sold out ones.
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