After years of waiting, we could see Nintendo’s first smartphone game within the next 6 months. The Verge passes along comments made by CEO Satoru Iwata during a shareholders meeting, in which he stated the company is aiming to debut the game before the end of the year.
Additionally, Iwata explained that Nintendo plans to release 5 mobile titles between now and March 2017. “You may think it is a small number,” he said. “But when we aim to make each title a hit, this is not a small number and should demonstrate our commitment to smart devices.”
Don’t get too excited yet, though. It’s not like you’ll be playing Super Mario on your iPhone anytime soon. Iwata reiterated that Nintendo will take a “cautious” approach to mobile, and doesn’t currently plan to port any of its existing titles, such as Super Mario, to smartphones or tablets.
“If we were simply to port software that already has a track record on a dedicated game system,” Iwata explained to investors, “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.”
With hardware sales slipping, investors have long been calling for Nintendo to produce games for mobile—where some developers make more off of one title than it does its entire library. Earlier this year, Nintendo announced that it has partnered with Japanese mobile game-maker DeNA.
Source: The Verge