No, Nintendo’s not going mobile just yet, but after today, it’s going to be letting someone else play with its IPs…on mobile.
At a press conference today, the company formally announced its new partnership with Japanese mobile developer and e-commerce provider, DeNA, with the intent of making all-new Nintendo games for mobile phones. Any and all Nintendo franchises are up for grabs and if you were holding your breath for old New Super Mario Bros. ports, forget about it. Ports of any old games will, by all accounts, not be in the cards.
You might remember DeNA as the company behind a recent Transformers mobile title and is working with Square on Final Fantasy Record Keeper. No games have been announced by either them or Nintendo yet.
And do you remember Club Nintendo? The folks at DeNA will apparently be some of the brains behind renewing the membership service, reportedly via Wii U, 3DS, and – coincidentally – PC. The as yet unnamed service is supposed to be out this year, but where in the world it’ll be is still unknown.
On top of all that, Nintendo let its biggest news slip: it’s apparently working on some kind of new game platform, but whether it’s hardware, software, or an outright home console is known to only the folks deep inside Nintendo right now.
“As proof that Nintendo maintains strong enthusiasm for the dedicated game system business, let me confirm that Nintendo is currently developing a dedicated game platform with a brand-new concept under the development codename ‘NX’ ” Iwata said. “It is too early to elaborate on the details of this project, but we hope to share more information with you next year.”
It’s been just shy of two-and-a-half years since the Wii U debuted in ’12 and if this “NX” thing is both a thing and an actual console or handheld, that’s big news indeed. Do you want either just yet? Or are you betting on it being something else? Tell us in the comments below.
Via TechCrunch & Eurogamer