Earlier today Nintendo announced that they would be partnering up with Japanese online giant DeNA to create smartphone games using Nintendo’s IP. Given the company’s stance on mobile, it was a very surprising but welcome move, and it seems that this is a move that DeNA had been convincing Nintendo to make for the past five years.Speaking to GamesBeat, DeNA West CEO Shintaro Asako revealed, “Really, the reason they were convinced that they wanted to work with us was that we were so determined to work with them that we have really been talking to them since 2010. Yes, we were talking to them for a long, long time.”
DeNA saw that Nintendo had a lot of untapped potential and it seems that it was their persistence that made Nintendo decide to go with them instead of another bigger company, such as GungHo Online whom Nintendo had collaborated with for Puzzles & Dragons: Mario Bros. Edition. DeNA was also willing to help Nintendo deal with the backend which was apparently another selling point.
According to Nintendo’s President Satoru Iwata, “Looking at successful players like King or Supercell, they have a massive user base, and they’re very successful at creating content, But they haven’t really built a backend system in the way we have done, and I think that’s the key part.” However like we said in our previous post, if you’re hoping to see existing titles ported to mobile, don’t hold your breath as these will be new titles based on existing IP which should still be worth looking forward to.
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