Nintendo has finally given in to pressure from its investors and has decided that it would be best if at least Super Mario moved into the smartphone gaming market in the future. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo CEO confirmed that although the proposition was met with reticence initially, the company will be releasing a Super Mario mobile game in the future. According to Iwata, releasing a mobile version of Super Mario “will allow us [Nintendo] to build a bridge between smart devices and gaming consoles. It doesn’t mean smart devices will eat away at gaming consoles, it will create an entirely new type of demand”.
The move to finally bring Super Mario to Android and iOS comes after investors have been pressuring the company to act upon its flailing value, in the face of competition from Sony and Microsoft. Even though rumors say Super Mario will be the first Nintendo-branded smartphone game, Iwata didn’t say whether those rumors are true. It could be speculated that the newly announced partnership with DeNA, Nintendo would launch an entirely new game, uninspired by previous releases such as Zelda.
Iwata didn’t mention when a new mobile game from the company would be released, but it is nice to know that we can finally expect titles to hit the Google Play Store or iTunes in the future. As 3DS sales waned in the past year, some action had to be taken in order to prevent Nintendo from becoming the next Atari. Although the company probably wouldn’t have disappeared into oblivion too soon, the dropping profits it has been making certainly point out that the competition is fierce.
Whether a mobile version of Super Mario will hit app stores will be clarified once the partnership between Nintendo and DeNA becomes fruitful in the sense that the companies will begin developing for mobile platforms. At the same time, Nintendo is working on a new gaming console dubbed the NX, about which we don’t know much until now, but details should be revealed next month, according to our sources.
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