Fans of Nintendo have been clamoring for a long time for Nintendo to bring its iconic game characters and properties to mobile devices. Just about every fan of Mario or Zelda would love to see those games come to smartphones and tablets to play on the go. Nintendo hasn’t developed games in the past for mobile platforms other than its own Nintendo DS and 3DS platforms.
The problem for Nintendo is that the popularity of dedicated portable gaming systems is waning in the face of the growing popularity of gaming on smartphones. Nintendo has finally decided to step into the mobile game market for smart devices and will do so with partner DeNA.
The two companies will be developing games based on Nintendo IP, including franchises with iconic characters. All game IP is in play for mobile platforms, I’d wager that means we will finally get a mobile Mario Kart or Mario Bros game.
Nintendo and DeNA will also work together to develop an online membership service that will be accessible from PCs, smart devices, and Nintendo consoles. That membership service is slated to launch in the fall of 2015. None of the games developed under this partnership will be ports of existing titles; they will all be designed from the ground up for mobile devices.
SOURCE: DeNA
