Long gone are the days of the Nintendo DS, welcome to a new generation of Nintendo gamers: the SmartPhoners.
You’ll now be able to enjoy Mario Cart and Pokémon right on your smartphone. At least that is the vision for the next wave of Nintendo games.
On March 19th, Nintendo, in conjunction with DeNA announced their new multimillion dollar idea to take the world of Nintendo gaming to the palms of mobile device users around the world.
Iwata, the company’s president, said in a press conference, “Now that smart devices have grown to become the window for so many people to personally connect with society, it would be a waste not to use these devices.”
This idea comes at the perfect time when Wii U sales were flopping.
In an exclusive interview with TIME magazine, Iwata claims that the next step for Nintendo is the right move to encourage inter-generational collaboration in the gaming world.
Iwata said, “One thing that we have found over the years is that video games themselves have a tendency to be difficult to break out of a particular segment.”
We’ve seen this with PS3 sales plummeting after the first two months of hitting the market. In addition, PS3 sales fell at an all time low with an introduction of PS4.
Iwata makes it a point to comment on new consoles taking over old ones. He added, “but what we have found with some of our most successful products, is that they tend to be ones where people are playing them together and the communication is spreading much more broadly and easily than standard word of mouth communication. And what you start to see is people of different generations playing together and talking with each other, and sometimes you even see grandchildren talking with their grandparents about a video game.”
It should come as no surprise that the 55-year old is proposing this unparalleled idea as in this fast-paced device-centred society this kind of inter-generational bonding is just what the doctor ordered. With so many devices stealing our attention lately, Nintendo seems to be heading in the right direction: communication with different age groups and gaming all in one go.
They not only plan on transferring previously Nintendo-only games just as they are to the new smartphone system, but they also plan on creating a whole new software that makes use of the smartphone devices and their mechanism as it is.
With the introduction of this new software, Nintendo plans to kill the Wii U. They’re planning for a smarter smartphone based gaming world that is both unique and exciting. After all, they are readying themselves for success for the next 125 years.
Will Nintendo succeed in making a come-back with its new smartphone idea?
