Features

Opinion: The Nintendo and DeNA partnership is terrific

Everyone's a winner

Opinion: The Nintendo and DeNA partnership is terrific
|
Agree? Disagree? Here's the argument from the other side.

Nintendo has finally announced what half of us predicted and the other half staunchly refused to believe would ever happen - it's going to make game for mobile.

Now, I'm not going to say I told you so, though you should really have guessed it considering the insane amount of money sloshing around in the mobile games industry, where titles like Puzzle & Dragons can make up to $2 million a day.

Yes. Day.

But I will say this: Nintendo's move into mobile is, without even a shadow of a doubt, a very good thing.

Money matters

I'm not sure why the Wii U flopped as hard as it did, but Nintendo needs to recover quickly if it plans to stay in the hardware game.

Enter the NX, Nintendo's newly announced hardware platform that will really take advantage of Club Nintendo, the re-vamped multi-platform software service that Nintendo and DeNA are building together.

All we can do is speculate right now as to what the NX actually is, but my money would be on a tablet / console hybrid that plays all of the Nintendo mobile games and links up with your TV.

The living room is an area in which Apple, Google, and Amazon have failed to gain a strong footing, so if Nintendo can assert itself in the mobile market AND in the living room, the stage is set for it to flourish once again.

This doesn't have to mean that the Wii U or the 3DS will become redundant, either, as the device that Nintendo has in its crosshairs is the iPad, which was never a threat to either of those systems.

If the NX is indeed a hybrid console / tablet it could happily co-exist with the Wii U and 3DS and even, brace yourselves: kill off the iPad entirely.

Mario Mushroom Run

Nintendo has already insisted that it will not release major titles or ports of its franchises on mobile. Instead, we'll be getting, essentially, mobile spin-offs.

Before you cry out in frustration, consider Rayman Jungle Run and Fiesta Run - terrific mobile games in their own right but ones that happily existed alongside Rayman Origins and Legends on your home console.

They may also have been your main reason for playing the console versions in the first place.

That's what I predict: cheap and fun tasters of the more grandiose experiences you can have on your Wii U and 3DS - I can't think of a single reason why anyone would be against that.

On the flipside, we could get another Pokemon Shuffle, which is a fun mobile take on its core franchise.

At no point did Nintendo consider making Pokemon an entirely match-three franchise based on the success of that game, and neither would it butcher its other franchises on mobile.

Spark

Nintendo games are synonymous with the word fun. If you look up 'fun' in the dictionary, Nintendo presumably appears somewhere on the page. That's how fun its games are.

Some mobile games are also really fun. Angry Birds is fun, Monument Valley is fun, Clash of Clans is fun.

Now, imagine a mobile game sprinkled with the magic of Nintendo. If the world had screen addiction problems before, just wait till Miyamoto gets into the lab and starts cooking.

Nintendo is an innovator and doesn't do anything in half measures. We will see new experiences entirely and, at the very least, highly polished mobile versions of its core franchises.

What we will not see, is a Flappy Kirby or a Clash of Kongs. That is out of Nintendo's character.

Instead, for inspiration, look at Pokemon Shuffle on the 3DS or Wii Sports Club on the Wii U - terrific games that offered a new take and monetisation scheme.

No one complained about those two, did they?

Nope.

Now tell us how stupid we are in the comments below.
Chris James
Chris James
A footy game fanatic and experienced editor of numerous computing and game titles, lively Chris is up for anything - including running Steel Media! (Madman!)