Nintendo ties up with Japanese smartphone gaming giant DeNA to make games for smartphones and tablets.
Nintendo Entertainment System is a renowned company since 1985 known for its gaming consoles. With the games like Mario, Zelda, Game Boy and the touch screens introduction, Nintendo made a big hit with its 3DS system in 2011 wherein users were able to view 3D content without the use of special glasses. Till now Nintendo was totally against the mobile gaming however Tuesday Nintendo announced its partnership with the Japanese smartphone gaming giant DeNA in a press conference arranged suddenly at Tokyo. The news was a big surprise to the entire smartphone and gaming console industry. It seems DeNA and Nintendo have entered into a $182 million cross shareholding partnership in which Nintendo holds a stake of 10% while DeNa would hold 1% stake. Nintendo would build apps for smart devices and the world wide membership service is expected to be released this fall which would be available to smartphones, PCs, Tablets and even to the console platforms. This is an indication that now users can have iconic franchises such as Mario, Pokemon and Zelda on their smartphones, PC and tablets however this will not involve porting games developed for the Nintendo Wii U or 3Ds systems. Nintendo would be creating new games for this partnership.
Nintendo was consistently refusing offers to share its gaming knowledge with the smartphone industry for a long time; one reason for this could be that it was experiencing some threat to its gaming console based business however with the giant Sony entering the gaming console industry and Xbox One and PlayStation 4, Nintendo is facing a tough competition and this could have added to its quick decision. Serkan Toto, a video game consultant based in Tokyo said: “This is basically a bombshell, especially given that Nintendo hasn’t been really fond of the smartphone gaming market. Nintendo is planning to go beyond consoles, which they have never done. They never even did anything on the PC before. So they just shook up the entire game world.”
On the other hand DeNa is a Japanese smartphone gaming giant which is into huge e-commerce and online auction of the games however even DeNA has been seeing some trouble in the recent times. “Mobile gaming is a hit-driven business, and we believe our alliance with Nintendo will significantly increase the possibility of creating hit titles with Nintendo’s beloved IP,” as per an email from DeNA spokesman Tomoyuki Akiyama.
Nintendo President Satoru Iwata made it clear in the Tuesday conference that Nintendo intends to remain committed to their lineup of the gaming consoles and their tie up with DeNA is to reach to the hundreds of millions of new users. He also announced that Nintendo is working on a new console code named NX which would be released soon.
