During an investors meeting today, president of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, confirmed that the company would enter the fray of the mobile games market, planning to release five titles based on its IP by the end of 2017.
Iwata elaborated, “Regarding the number of the titles, you may want to know that we will release approximately five titles by the end of the next fiscal year, which is the end of March 2017…”
He continued, “You may think it is a small number, 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.”
Nintendo is hoping to turn the mobile market into one of the pillars of its business structure, and is thus committed to developing long-lasting titles with high replayability.
To accomplish this feat, Nintendo partnered with Japanese mobile gaming company DeNA to assist in the development of the new titles.
Iwata announced that the producer of Mario Kart will lead development on these smartphone titles, stating, “Internally at Nintendo, we have executed several organizational and personnel changes in order to properly operate the smart device business, and we will make further changes before the first release.”
Ultimately, the company hopes to employ the mobile market as both a foundational pillar of the business and as a gateway to its console market.
Do you feel that Nintendo’s properties will translate well to the mobile space? Let us know in the comments below.