There’s a very real chance the Mario Bros. soon will show up on your smartphone. Nintendo announced Tuesday that, after resisting the move to mobile for years, it is striking a partnership with DeNA, a Japanese company that owns a popular mobile gaming platform.
It’s a somewhat surprising move for Nintendo. When rumors about a possible mobile game have cropped up before, fans have been quick to cheer — only to have their hopes repeatedly dashed by the company’s polite insistence it would only make games for its own devices such as the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS lines.
But there seems to have been a shift in thinking. According to a statement, the company said “all Nintendo IP will be eligible for development and exploration by the alliance,” meaning that all Nintendo characters should be on the table, from Mario to Zelda.
Still, this doesn’t mean all the favorite titles from your childhood will be making it to your phone. The release makes it clear “only new original games optimized for smart device functionality will be created, rather than porting games created specifically for the Wii U home console or the Nintendo 3DS portable system.”
The overall strategy seems to be to have mobile titles act as complements to the company’s portable and console titles, possibly acting as a hook to buying those more expensive, longer titles.
Nintendo has struggled a bit in adjusting to the new landscape of games — particularly the rise of mobile gaming, which has eaten into sales of the lighter, family-focused fare that has been a linchpin in Nintendo’s catalog for years. The firm initially struggled to sell units of its Wii U console, although it saw stronger sales over the holidays. It also recently celebrated the fact that its latest Nintendo 3DS was the best-selling portable video game system in the month of February, besting Sony’s PS Vita.
Nintendo also has been looking at new avenues of business, including a push into the smart health space. The company also announced it would build an “online membership” service on top of DeNA’s existing services that can be reached from smart devices, the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, as well as from PCs. That’s targeted to launch this fall.
All in all, this seems like good news for Nintendo, which generally has been seen as behind the curve when it comes to building an online presence for its very devoted fan base.
Investors certainly thought so: Nintendo’s stock was up roughly 25 percent on the news during Tuesday trading, to $17.76 per share.