In a business presentation early this morning, Nintendo revealed that it will be creating content for mobile phones. While not games themselves – at least not at first – Nintendo have not ruled out development teams using game characters or creating mini-games themselves.
Instead, it will mainly take the form of an app for showcasing the latest games, with their strategy being to show “the value of our entertainment offerings, thus encouraging more people to participate in Nintendo platforms”. Iwata said:
I have not given any restrictions to the development team, even not ruling out the possibility of making games or using our game characters. However, if you report that we will release Mario on smart devices, it would be a completely misleading statement.
It’s an interesting approach, and the full translated statement reveals more of their exact strategy. It feels as though they’re moving forward and realising the potential of mobile devices without hurting the 3DS in any way, and in fact adding value to both that and the Wii U. We’ll have to wait and see though.
They’ve also leaped forward in how they’re offering games and which they’re offering – there were talks of an on-demand service for regular customers, but they’re also managing to bring DS games to Wii U via virtual console.
That makes sense, and could breathe some new life into these games with the controls of the Wii U GamePad and big screen TV, though there will be some huge (or rather low) resolution issues to get around first.
Finally, they may license out their characters to others. I doubt this is in the games sector, but it could mean a new wave of Super Mario cartoons or even movies.
Dominic Leighton
DS games might look alright if they’re just on the gamepad – I can’t see how you’d want to play them on a television unless there was some form of resolution or texture upgrade.
Hopefully Nintendo will start moving into the modern age now, I’m still waiting for them to tie digital purchases to your account rather than your console.
Starman
A Warioware game would be perfect for mobiles.
Cron_13
oh god yes!
mrfodder
I can’t even imagine how bad 256×192 blown up on a 50 inch screen will look. I don’t see how any amount of post processing will make that look good.
Kennykazey
Why can’t they release the DS games digitally for the 3DS? That actually makes sense!
And where’s the virtual console GBA titles we were promised a year ago?
Blair Inglis
It’s about coding, I think – not just a straight job of porting them over.
Kennykazey
But the 3DS is backwards compatible, it can already run the games natively of sorts. It just needs to be tought to run them from the SD-card rather than the cartridge.
Oh… are you talking about the GBA titles? In that case emulation should work just fine. Everything but the toaster can emulate GBA games at this point, and if some basement-dwellers can get it working flawlessly on smartphones then Nintendo can do it on the 3DS and Wii U. No excuses. They don’t even need to port the games (some rights will be needed, but we primarily want first-party titles anyway), it’s just a question of getting the emulation software working right.
Dominic Leighton
Yup, all of the Advance Wars series needs to be on my 3DS! When they’re aiming to improve profitability re-releasing their back catalogue must be amongst the easiest ways of doing it.