Nintendo intends to release five mobile games before 2017

It’s been a long time coming, too long if you ask me, but Nintendo is finally stepping into the modern world of smartphones and tablets. Before the year is over, the company will have released its first-ever mobile game, and intends to have another four more released before 2017. The best part is that these games won’t just be ports of older games, they will be entirely new and developed from the ground up for mobile devices. 

Nintendo’s CEO and president Satoru Iwata announced in an earnings call today that its first smartphone game — developed in collaboration with DeNA — will launch by the end of 2015. The company plans to release five titles by 2017, and has made the necessary personnel additions to develop games tailored for smartphones. In March, Nintendo revealed its partnership with game publisher DeNA, which includes a cross-platform gaming service that will be available on a wide range of devices, including smartphones, tablets and PCs, along with Nintendo’s 3DS, Wii U and its upcoming NX gaming console. Iwata reiterated that the upcoming games will not be ports of existing titles, and that they will be developed from the ground up: “If we were simply to port software that already has a track record on a dedicated game system, 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. If we did not aim to achieve a significant result, it would be meaningless for us to do it at all. Accordingly, we are going to carefully select appropriate IP and titles for our smart device deployment.”