Nintendo's first smartphone game to arrive this year, wants five out by early 2017

[Shawn Knight]

The first official smartphone game from Nintendo will arrive by the end of the year with more where that came from. By March 2017, the company aims to have five mobile titles on the market according to CEO Satoru Iwata.

During a meeting with investors following the release of Nintendo’s most recent earnings report, Iwata agreed that five games may seem like a small number. But when they aim to make each title a hit and because they want to support each one for a significant amount of time after its release, it suddenly doesn’t seem that small.

If anything, Iwata added, it should demonstrate their serious commitment to the smart device business.

Iwata reiterated that the company won’t simply be porting existing console games to smartphones. He said that even with highly popular IP, the odds of success are quite low if consumers cannot appreciate the quality of a game. Perhaps more importantly, he continued, is the fact that a port with a track record on a dedicated game system would not match the touch-first play style of mobile.

On one hand, I completely understand why Nintendo wouldn’t be interested in recycling classic games on mobile devices. Yet on the other hand, myself – and probably many of our readers – grew up playing games from the NES, SNES and N64 era. A trip down memory lane would be awesome although Iwata is right; doing so on a touch interface would be difficult at best.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/60618-nintendo-first-smartphone-game-year.html

 

[Kibaruk]

Mario Kart will be there, I assure you. For one part, with the accelerometer on the phone the handling could be done the same way as it's on a wiimote controler.

 

[Guest]

Landscape super mario world? no thanks lol

 

[Pinkie Pie]

I wonder if it is the end of Nintendo hardware.

 

[veLa]

I already play a few Gameboy color games through an emulator on my phone, it shouldn't be hard time get those types of games running.

 

[risc32]

Landscape super mario world? no thanks lol

Landscape? Is that a problem? I guess while the rest of us were playing snes games on 4x3 monitors you played it on the worlds only 3x4.

 

[Guest]

I played it on a television. Unless the image shown above is from the display being fitted to the screen, I believe it was leaving things off screen.

 

[Pinkie Pie]

I played it on a television. Unless the image shown above is from the display being fitted to the screen, I believe it was leaving things off screen.

I'm guessing if you turned it sideways the game display would automatically rotate into landscape mode.

 

[9Nails]

I am happy to hear that the games are being developed for touch interfaces first. That's better than a clumsy port from the console. Now I have a feeling that Nintendo will miss the mark with prices. This market finds many casual games for $2.99 or less. However I'm placing bets on $14.99 as the starting price point when Nintendo enters the play store.

 

[Emexrulsier]

I would love to see a mario kart and Zelda game all exclusive to smart phones. But yet pricing is what I reckon could be an issue. If they price a game too low it could dint their handheld console market but then I suppose if the game was big like a good zelda game and supported loads of devices and maybe worked with 360 joypads etc then I would pay 15 quid or so.

 

[Kibaruk]

I am happy to hear that the games are being developed for touch interfaces first. That's better than a clumsy port from the console. Now I have a feeling that Nintendo will miss the mark with prices. This market finds many casual games for $2.99 or less. However I'm placing bets on $14.99 as the starting price point when Nintendo enters the play store.

Thats the beauty in nintendo games, you pick them up on a casual matter to become a try-hard-core gamer... there is no Mario game that's not 100% completed on my shelve !

 

[sadman3]

This only happens when they start running out of ideas