Nintendo will not be bringing their games to smartphones and other smart devices, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata stated during a financial results meeting with investors and analysts today.
“Many people say that releasing Nintendo’s software assets for smart devices would expand our business,” Iwata stated. “However, we believe that we cannot show our strength as an integrated hardware-software business in this field, and therefore it would difficult to continue the same scale of business in the medium- to long term.”
That said, Iwata continued, Nintendo will dedicate a small team of developers to take advantage of smart devices with the intent of promoting their own software.
“We would like to, instead of directly expanding our business on smart devices, focus on achieving greater ties with our consumers on smart devices and expanding our platform business,” Iwata stated. “However, creating stronger ties with consumers would require them to engage with our offers frequently. As we know that this is not an easy task to achieve, we will use a small, select team of developers to achieve it.”
“We recognize that attracting consumers’ attention among the myriads of mobile applications is not easy, and as I said before, we feel that simply releasing our games just as they are on smart devices would not provide the best entertainment for smart devices, so we are not going to take any approach of this nature,” Iwata elaborated.
He continued: “Having said that, however, in the current environment surrounding smart devices, we feel that we will not be able to gain the support of many consumers unless we are able to provide something truly valuable that is unique to Nintendo. Accordingly, I have not given any restrictions to the development team, even not ruling out the possibility of making games or using our game characters.”
Iwata was careful to point out once again that this doesn’t mean Nintendo plan on bringing their traditional software to smartphones.
“If you report that we will release Mario on smart devices, it would be a completely misleading statement,” Iwata warned. “It is our intention to release some application on smart devices this year that is capable of attracting consumer attention and communicating the value of our entertainment offerings, so I would encourage you to see how our approach yields results.”
It would seem a report earlier in the week by Japanese business publication Nikkei wasn’t off the mark—Nintendo will be releasing apps and mini-games on smartphones to promote their consoles and characters.
