Nintendo has shared a bit about its plans to get into the mobile gaming market in partnership with DeNA. When the plans were first announced, many gamers were sceptical about the idea of Nintendo mobile games, particularly when it comes “freemium” games. That’s the type of game where you can play it for free at first, but then after a while continuing the game becomes essentially impossible without paying for some in-app bonuses. You know, microtransactions. Nobody wants to have to pay 99 cents each time they want to catch a Pokemon.

At a shareholder meeting, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said that he doesn’t want Nintendo to use the term “free-to-play” to describe these games at all. “We do not want to use the free-to-play terminology that implies that you can play games free-of-charge. Instead, we use the term “free-to-start,” as this term more aptly describes that at the beginning you can start to play for free.”

First of all, that actually sounds like a good idea. It’d be nice if all mobile freemium games would adopt that terminology. But since they won’t, let’s move on. “The fact of the matter is, game software with a one-time payment system has not been doing a great job on smart devices,” Iwata said. He believes that mobile game prices are just so low, there’s no point in developing the kind of games for mobile devices that would only require a one-time payment.

“Since Nintendo wants to cherish the value of software, there will be a limit to how low of a price we might want to attach to our game applications for smart devices. The price of our game applications on smart devices will be compared with the prices of other smart device game applications. We believe we should not limit our payment system only to one-time payments.” So Iwata basically wants the pricing of Nintendo mobile games to match the pricing of other mobile games. Which, sadly, means microtransactions. But Iwata didn’t rule out providing one-time payment options.

Iwata was also sure to let people know he’s aware of the negativity surrounding microtransactions. “Some games are designed so that the players will be so excited psychologically… that they do not think twice about pushing the button, which immediately completes the monetary transaction and the player is charged with the bill. We know that some of such games have become a social issue.” Iwata reckons the number of people who actually spend money on these sorts of games in Japan is quite small. But because that small number of people spends enough money in microtransactions to buy “several dedicated video game systems,” the free-to-play/free-to-start model is very profitable.

But he says that’s not the case overseas. Many freemium game companies are asking less and less of their customers. He doesn’t think the model he described for Japan would work abroad. Emphasising the importance of making games that appeal to all demographics around the world, Nintendo wants to make games that are cheap but popular. “In other words, even if a consumer makes a relatively small payment, because of the large consumer base, the game can generate big revenue.”

Iwata also emphasised that Nintendo doesn’t want to adopt the “notorious” business model of charging a small number of players a lot of money. He said that could harm Nintendo’s brand.

So the bottom line here is that Nintendo is, for now, treading carefully into the mobile world. It seems they have a good understanding of the gaming community’s dislike of the traditional free-to-play business model and are trying to be as transparent as possible. That’s particularly clear in their desire to call their games “free-to-start.” As long as Nintendo’s mobile games include some sort of one-time-pay option (perhaps a full version and a free version), we won’t have much to worry about.