Nintendo Wants Five Smartphone Games By March 2017
According to a new report from the Japanese business news provider Sankei, Mario Kart producer Hideki Konno has been put in charge of overseeing Nintendo’s new partnership with DeNa to bring into existence those Mario mobile games every investor has been screaming for. Some mobile game makers actually pump out one game per week (and barely make a profit) but Nintendo president Satoru Iwata feels Nintendo should only commit to five, and release them sparsely over the next two years.
“You may think it is a small number, but when we aim to make each title a hit, and because we want to thoroughly operate every one of them for a significant amount of time after their releases, this is not a small number at all and should demonstrate our serious commitment to the smart device business.” Iwata assured the crowd he was addressing that these games will have “strong staying power.” If he’s found a way to force that into happening, I’d like to know about it.
The scenario I envision is this: Nintendo releases its first smartphone title, pricing it at $19.99. It’s largely ignored in favor of freemium games, and quickly sinks into the quicksand that is the Apple marketplace. So they release another one, this time making sure it’s more affordable: $17.99. It fails to catch on as well.
Then, while they’re still scratching their heads, they decide to browse the marketplace and check out their competition — it must be vastly superior! Instead they find mountains and mountains of unauthorized clones based on their older games. Why didn’t anyone tell them about this? Nintendo calls their lawyers immediately, and piles on case after case as they flick through the app store. By evening’s end, they are preparing to sue 17,859 people, and the number goes up throughout the week.
From all the revenue gained by lawsuits, Nintendo earns record profits, and declares their venture into smartphone gaming a success.