Nintendo made big news when it announced a partnership with Japanese firm DeNA to bring its games and characters to mobile devices. But while many have been worried that Nintendo will simply license out its properties to DeNA, president Satoru Iwata has revealed that this won’t be the case. “Development of smart device games will be mainly done by Nintendo,” he told Time. DeNA, meanwhile, will be handling the other side of the equation. “DeNA has extensive know-how in developing the ‘service’ side of things,” Iwata explained, “and will be primarily responsible for the service-oriented operations.”
Nintendo promises new mobile games will ‘mainly’ be developed in house
‘We will not do anything that may hurt Nintendo’s brand image.’
‘We will not do anything that may hurt Nintendo’s brand image.’
is an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.
What those games will look like is still unclear. DeNA has built its business primarily on free-to-play mobile games, though Iwata wouldn’t confirm whether Nintendo would go down a similar route, saying only that “we will not do anything that may hurt Nintendo’s brand image.” Nintendo has experimented with free games, most recently with Pokemon Shuffle on 3DS. Of course, Nintendo isn’t completely abandoning console games — after announcing the DeNA partnership, Iwata also revealed that a successor to the Wii U is already in the works.
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