14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that Nintendo isn't beginning to shift its focus from its main business with the recent foray into the mobile world, but instead solidify it.
The Japanese company expects that its new deal with DeNA, a mobile gaming company, will end up driving console sales, as new users become more and more familiar with video games and with Nintendo properties.
The Big N believes that those who regularly game on smartphones will end up wanting to explore bigger and better experiences on its dedicated game systems. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata expressed his expectations during a presentation that is now available on the company's website.
He further revealed that the company was working on a membership service that would expand the existing user experience to encompass newcomers playing the company's games on smartphones, acting as a bridge between consoles and smart devices, including the upcoming mystery device codenamed Nintendo NX.
The new account system will enable users to access their games across multiple devices using a single ID, uniting their libraries and making accessing entertainment easier. This will also help existing users, which is really good news, considering the hurdles you currently have to jump through in order to switch devices.
Mario and Zelda might land on smartphones this year
Nintendo plans to debut the first smartphone video games this year, having five different titles in the works, scheduled to come out by March next year.
The company's plan is to make each of the games count, and not flood the market with low-quality products, but instead treat its existing fans and newcomers with premium experiences.
This will lead, the company believes, to the smart devices market becoming one of the pillars of Nintendo's revenue structure, once the business gradually expands into global markets.
The games will use Nintendo's highly popular intellectual properties, but will be completely new titles, instead of simply ports of existing games, in order to create experiences custom-tailored to the particularities of smart devices and user behavior.
The Japanese corporation has been on a roll lately, managing to see its first profitable fiscal year since 2011. Breaking into the mobile market will surely help the company see even more revenue, and the internal forecast points to a doubling of its operating profit over the course of fiscal year 2016.