Gaming stalwart Nintendo is set to show off its first mobile games for the iOS and Android platforms on Thursday, says a report from The Wall Street Journal. Nintendo announced earlier this year that it would soon be bringing games starring some of its iconic characters to the mobile platforms.
Nintendo had held back for years from expanding its iconic games to other platforms, instead relying on its own hardware to deliver its popular gaming titles.
Nintendo announced back in May that they would deliver a total of five titles for iOS and Android by March 2017. The Japanese company said at the time that while the titles would include current intellectual property from its gaming library, the titles themselves would be new, in order to take advantage of the capabilities of the mobile platforms, rather than be a straight port of any existing titles.
As we confirmed on March 17, all of our IP can be considered for a smart device game. On the other hand, since the game business on smart devices is already severely competitive, even with highly popular IP, the odds of success are quite low if consumers cannot appreciate the quality of a game.
Also, 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.
While Nintendo’s announcement on Thursday will concern a title for the iOS and Android platforms, we at MacTrast will hope against hope for a possibility of Nintendo titles for the new Apple TV. From all reports, moving iOS titles to the tvOS platform isn’t complicated. Perhaps a good showing on iOS devices will encourage the gaming giant to develop titles for Apple’s new set-top streamer.
As soon as we hear anything about Nintendo’s announcement tomorrow, we’ll be sure to share everything we find out. So, stay tuned.
