Nintendo won’t port titles to smart devices, ‘no exceptions’ on what IP appear 

Nintendo broke the internet earlier today with the announcement of its alliance with DeNA a mobile game and application developer. The alliance will see DeNa and Nintendo developer original games for smart devices.

During the presentation Satoru Iwata made it quite clear that any games that were to be developed for smart devices would be wholly original and nothing from Nintendo’s back catalogue would be ported nor would any Wii U or 3DS games make the trip to mobile.

Nintendo does not see the mobile as a place for its traditional games with traditional controls. If Nintendo were to port games to smart devices they believe it would devalue their IP.

As for which Nintendo IP will be used, we do not intend to make any exceptions. Potentially, any Nintendo IP could be used in our smart device software. On the other hand, as I just said, games on smart devices require ever-evolving services rather than just being a finished product. A combined effort will be necessary to operate them. People’s attention would only be dispersed if we simply increased the number of the titles we simultaneously released, and we could not expect to expand our business. Accordingly, we will narrow down the titles for development and operation to some extent.

Please also note that, even if we use the same IP on our dedicated video game systems and smart devices, we will not port the titles for the former to the latter just as they are. There are significant differences in the controls, strengths and weaknesses between the controllers for dedicated game systems and the touchscreens of smart devices. We have no intention at all to port existing game titles for dedicated game platforms to smart devices because if we cannot provide our consumers with the best possible play experiences, it would just ruin the value of Nintendo’s IP.

And, if I can talk a bit further about our game development plan, we will continue doing our best to develop dedicated game titles for our dedicated game hardware platforms just as we have been doing. For smart devices, even in the case where we utilize the same IP, we will create completely new game software that will perfectly match the play styles of smart devices.

So Nintendo’s made it quite obvious they’re not porting anything, so what would like to see Nintendo make for smart devices? Which licence could work best on phones and tablets?

Source: Nintendo