Nintendo have indicated that they will release “approximately five titles” for smart devices by March 2017.
It was Satoru Iwata who confirmed such news at the company’s financial results briefing, sharing that, while the number may be seen to be low, Nintendo will “aim to make each title a hit.”
They will similarly look to operate each “for a significant amount of time” post-release, to demonstrate their “serious commitment” to smart devices.
“We will start the service for the first game application by the end of this calendar year,” Iwata revealed to investors. “Internally at Nintendo, we have executed several organisational and personnel changes in order to properly operate the smart device business, and we will make further changes before the first release.”
He continued, “As we confirmed on March 17, all of our IP can be considered for a smart device game. On the other hand, since the game business on smart devices is already severely competitive, even with highly popular IP, the odds of success are quite low if consumers cannot appreciate the quality of a game.
“Also, if we were simply to port software that already has a track record on a dedicated game system, it would not match the play styles of smart devices, and the appropriate business models are different between the two, so we would not anticipate a great result. If we did not aim to achieve a significant result, it would be meaningless for us to do it at all. Accordingly, we are going to carefully select appropriate IP and titles for our smart device deployment.
“Regarding the number of the titles, you may want to know that we will release approximately five titles by the end of the next fiscal year, which is the end of March 2017. You may think it is a small number, but when we aim to make each title a hit, and because we want to thoroughly operate every one of them for a significant amount of time after their releases, this is not a small number at all and should demonstrate our serious commitment to the smart device business.
“We will strive to expand this business into global markets at a steady pace so that eventually we will entertain hundreds of millions of people all around the world. We are aiming to make this one of the pillars of Nintendo’s revenue structure.”
