Nintendo’s horrendous 2013 Wii U sales numbers may finally have pushed the company to make the move that so many iOS users have been longing to see – The company may finally move into the smartphone games market.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata stated in a press conference that the company is now considering a “new business structure” that involves smart devices, reports Bloomberg.
This comes as Nintendo reported their third consecutive annual loss, and faces the shadow of a greatly lowered sales forecast for its flagship Wii U gaming console. The company has scaled back expectations for the console from 9 million, all the way down to 2.8 million units. The big N also lowered expectations for sales of its 3DS portable game console from 18 million units down to 13.5 million.
“We are thinking about a new business structure,” Iwata said at a press conference yesterday in Osaka, Japan. “Given the expansion of smart devices, we are naturally studying how smart devices can be used to grow the game-player business. It’s not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone.”
Competition from mobile device has increased in recent years, in 2010 Iwata reportedly instructed senior Nintendo executives to regard Apple and its iOS line of devices as “the enemy of the future,” and was quoted by CVG last August as saying he would “never think about providing [Nintendo’s] precious resources for other platforms at all.”
Investors and analysts have long clamored for Nintendo to develop titles for both the iOS and Android platforms, a move we may finally see following the devastating sales figures for the Wii U.
