News

Nintendo intends to have five smartphone games out by March 2017, aims to make each one a hit

Mario Kart producer is working on them

Nintendo intends to have five smartphone games out by March 2017, aims to make each one a hit
|

Nintendo had a financial results briefing today that revealed more about its plans for smartphone games in collaboration with DeNA.

During the briefing, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said that Nintendo plans to have approximately five smartphone titles out by the end of the next fiscal year, which is March 2017.

"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 said.

He added that Nintendo is looking to "entertain hundreds of millions of people all around the world" with its smartphone games. And that the hope is that they will become "one of the pillars of Nintendo's revenue structure."

Siliconera also digs up a report by Japanese site Sankei that reveals that Iwata wanted to assure everyone how serious he was about Nintendo's commitment to smartphone games.

To illustrate this, he mentioned that the producer of the Mario Kart series is working on its smartphone titles.

Iwata didn't give this producer a name, but as Siliconera notes, "it seems likely that he’s referring to Hideki Konno, who was the producer for Mario Kart 8, Mario Kart 7, and has been involved with the series since its early days."

Chris Priestman
Chris Priestman
Anything eccentric, macabre, or just plain weird, is what Chris is all about. He turns the spotlight on the games that fly under the radar.