It follows a successful first year in the market, with Nintendo's own Miitomo, Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes all performing to or above expectations, alongside the huge success of Pokemon Go (which Nintendo part-owns).Despite only releasing three of the five games it promised by March 2017 (with the fourth, Animal Crossing, delayed into the next financial year), Nintendo says its partnership with mobile developer DeNA is "going extremely well".
The strategy seems to be to continue using existing Nintendo IP as the basis for its smartphone games:
"It is possible to provide applications that feel related to the dedicated video game systems even if they do not have any direct connections," said managing executive officer, Shinya Takahashi. "I believe that smart devices, particularly bigger ones like tablets, are easy for smaller children to use which makes it easier for them to experience Nintendo?s IP (intellectual property), so we have been planning to create synergy between smart devices and our dedicated video game systems."It's not clear exactly whether "synergy" simply refers to releasing mobile games under the same IPs being released on Nintendo consoles, or if Takahashi is referring more specifically to mechanical connections between games - for instance, the upcoming Animal Crossing mobile game will apparently connect with handheld and console Animal Crossing games.
It seems that Nintendo sees mobile gaming as a serious prospect, and one it wants to leverage more in the long-term. "Though the Nintendo 3DS and, soon, Nintendo Switch will remain our most important business," explained Shigeru Miyamoto, "we will continue to expand the smart-device business since it has gradually begun to contribute to Nintendo?s business as a whole."
In more current history, Nintendo released Fire Emblem Heroes this week, and has already laid out its plans for post-launch DLC. Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK News Editor, and he's just saying that a Wonderful 101 pinball-action game would be cool, that's all. Follow him on Twitter.
