Pokemon Shuffle making the jump to mobile devices
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS eShop, Mobile, News | 15 Comments
The Pokemon Company announced today that Pokemon Shuffle is coming to mobile devices. Previously, the free-to-play title was launched on the 3DS as an eShop download, which has seen over 4.5 million downloads.
The mobile version of Pokemon Shuffle will be arriving later this year. It seems to be the same exact version as the 3DS edition, but with optimizations for iPhone and Android.
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Reggie: Nintendo’s mobile games can offer “a positive experience”, drive people back to core systems
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Mobile, News | 7 Comments
Back in 2010, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime made some comments about mobile gaming in which he told Polygon that, on these devices, people don’t seem to stick to a single title.
Here’s what he said at the time:
“Clearly, it doesn’t look like their platform is a viable profit platform for game development because so many of the games are free versus paid downloads. If our games represent a range between snacks of entertainment and full meals depending on the type of game, (Apple’s) aren’t even a mouthful, in terms of the gaming experience you get.”
Polygon spoke with Reggie at E3 2015 last week and said that Nintendo hasn’t changed its opinion on the nature of gaming on smart devices. He also believes that mobile gaming can offer “a positive experience” while driving people back to the Big N’s core systems.
“We’re going to do it in a partnership with DeNA. DeNA has technical knowledge that we’re leveraging. They have a rapid iteration process to drive improvement in the content that we’re going to leverage, but Nintendo is going to create the content. We’ve announced that Mr. Kono, from Mario Kart fame, is going to be our lead developer on this. And so from that standpoint things haven’t changed. It’s our IP, we’re going to leverage it and we do believe done properly it’s going to drive a positive experience with the IP and drive people back to our core video system business whether it’s handheld or console.”
More: DeNA, interview, Reggie Fils-Aime
Iwata again says that the Nintendo Digital Event will cover titles through early 2016, no NX, QOL, or smart device games
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, Mobile, News, Switch, Wii U | 13 Comments
Update: Bumped to the top. Fully translated tweets:
[Iwata] Originally, the Media Briefings (press conferences) were attended not only by reporters but also by security analysts, distributors and game industry staff—but now that Internet broadcasting is commonplace, many videogame fans can now watch them, too.
[Iwata] On the other hand, the information sought by reporters present at the press conferences can vary greatly depending on their viewpoints. As a result, every year saw the difficulty of pleasing everyone increase. That’s when we settled for a new format to convey information. With the Nintendo Direct format, our E3 has greatly evolved in the last 2-3 years.
[Iwata] This is the back story as to how the Media Briefing changed into the Nintendo Digital Event. During the Digital Event broadcast, we also have distributors gather and open a conference specially dedicated to them.
[Iwata] During our financial results briefing on May 8th, we talked about how we won’t announce anything about the new NX hardware until next year, and how we don’t have plans to showcase our QoL (Quality of Life) business or smart device announcements at E3, which we at Nintendo consider a trade fair for console games. However, perhaps these statements may not reached out as far as we had hoped.
[Iwata] For this year’s Nintendo Digital Event, we will use the occasion to showcase Wii U and 3DS software that is expected to release this year and early next year. It will be voiced in English with Japanese subtitles. This year, I’d like to join you all in Japan to watch the broadcast together. (Note: The second half of that tweet obviously pertains only to Japan.)
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has reconfirmed what fans should and shouldn’t expect from the Digital Event today. You know, just in case you needed a reminder.
Once again, Nintendo will be focusing on games launching through early 2016. This applies to both Wii U and 3DS.
As mentioned previously, there will be no talk about Nintendo’s next system known as the “NX”. There also won’t be any news about the Big N’s Quality of Life initiative or smart device games.
That’s it! Iwata will be watching along from Japan as the Nintendo Digital Event airs. He’ll probably be tweeting throughout the day as well.
More: E3 2015, Satoru Iwata
Iwata on challenges with smart device games, benefits, Nintendo’s IP strategy
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Mobile, News | 3 Comments
Satoru Iwata closed out the Q&A portion of Nintendo’s latest financial results briefing by further discussing the company’s smart device software strategy. Iwata was asked about how often titles will be released, and how long service will be obtained.
Here’s the full question from one of the investors:
In my mind, I already have a clear-cut image as to what will happen in a year or two from today, but I hope to be able to correctly understand your mid-term smart device software strategy. Although you emphasize that the aspect of “service” is stronger with smart device games (as they, unlike packaged software for dedicated game systems, require constant content updates after release), we often see that some of them have shown temporarily good results immediately after their releases by climbing to the top of the download chart. On the other hand, as I hear what Mr. Iwata has said so far, I feel as if the company is willing to increase the relevant revenue gradually over a long time. Does your strategy involve constantly releasing three or four titles every year or will you limit the total number of titles to be released to around at least five at the start and maintain the service operations for such limited number of software for five or even 10 years in order to steadily increase the revenue?
Iwata’s complete response – covering Nintendo’s smart device plans and related benefits, plus IP strategy – is posted below.
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Iwata on Nintendo’s monetization approach to smart device games, still working on Mii app
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 0 comments
One topic stemming from the Q&A portion of Nintendo’s latest financial results briefing concerns how the company will monetize its smart phone games. President Satoru Iwata offered some insight last week, and while he didn’t provide any specifics, he did discuss what the strategy is moving forward.
Iwata indicated that Nintendo is looking at the key term “wide and small” as opposed to “narrow and large”. He explained that the strategy is how to obtain “a small amount of money from a wide range of consumers.”
In his response, Iwata also mentioned that Nintendo is still working on its smart device app using Mii characters that has long been teased.
Read up on Iwata’s full comments below.
More: Satoru Iwata, top
Iwata on generating “Nintendo-like profits”, smart device business, preparing initiatives/changes for dedicated games business
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Mobile, News | 1 Comment
Returning to “Nintendo-like profits” is something that often tends to be discussed at the Big N’s financial results briefings. The general thought is that by reaching that mark, Nintendo would be bringing in an operating income of over 100 billion yen.
One investor asked about reaching “Nintendo-like profits” during the Q&A portion of the company’s financial results meeting last week after it was announced that Nintendo’s operating income target for this fiscal year is 50 billion yen. Check out what president Satoru Iwata had to say below. In addition to discussing “Nintendo-like profits”, Iwata also commented on what’s in store for the smart device business, and teased preparing initiatives/changes for the dedicated games business “to make changes to some of the elements that are currently not working so well.”
Firstly, we base our thinking regarding profits for the next fiscal year on generating those that can be seen as typical of Nintendo, just as you mentioned. As investors should determine “Nintendo-like profits,” I believe it is inappropriate for me to explain in public what level of profit this should be. However, many assess that generating an annual operating income of 100 billion yen can be considered a “Nintendo-like profit structure.” As such assessments have been made, we will structure our plans for the next fiscal year to reach such a level. For the fiscal year that just ended in March 2015, we positioned it to be the year to balance revenue and expenses, and we managed to accomplish this. We set our financial forecasts taking into consideration the steps we should take this fiscal year if we are to aim for “Nintendo-like profits” in the next fiscal year.
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Nintendo not talking about smartphone games at E3 since the event is for “dedicated gaming systems”
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Mobile, News | 17 Comments
Nintendo will be releasing its first mobile game this year. We don’t know what exactly is planned, but don’t expect to hear about anything at E3 2015 next month.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, speaking at the company’s latest financial briefing, confirmed that there are no plans to discuss smartphone games. That’s because they realize the event is for “dedicated gaming systems”.
Iwata on maximizing Nintendo’s IP, mobile plans
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 2 Comments
And now, I would like to discuss our future business developments.
Right now, the game business is undergoing significant change. The spread of the Internet and social media has dramatically changed the lifestyles of people all over the world, and Nintendo is adjusting its strategic endeavors in line with the new market dynamics.
For one thing, in order to maximize the value of Nintendo IP, we are working to leverage opportunities that go beyond a traditional focus on dedicated video game systems. As you know, amiibo is one such effort. Also, we made the announcement that we will take advantage of smart devices. As smart devices are increasing in significance as the dominant window through which consumers connect with one another and with society, it is natural for us to leverage smart devices to communicate directly with our consumers.
In addition, to facilitate the ability for consumers to be closely and continuously connected with Nintendo IP, Nintendo will also deploy Nintendo IP on games for smart devices.
Regarding this subject, we announced our business alliance with DeNA on March 17. Each of our companies offers unique strengths, and we are confident that when combined, the synergies will enable us to compete strongly in the smart device space.
We will start the service for the first game application by the end of this calendar year. Internally at Nintendo, we have executed several organizational and personnel changes in order to properly operate the smart device business, and we will make further changes before the first release.
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.
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Nintendo looking to release 5 mobile titles by March 2017, first one reconfirmed for this year
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 4 Comments
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata shared a brief update about the company’s mobile plans during today’s financial results briefing.
According to Iwata, Nintendo wants to have five mobile games out by March 2017. This may seem like a small number, but the Big N wants them to become hits. Additionally, given the business, Nintendo doesn’t believe their plans are half-hearted at all.
It won’t be too long before we see Nintendo’s first, true effort for smart devices. The goal is to bring out the first mobile title this year.
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DeNA wants Nintendo mobile games to bring in over $25 million per month
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 8 Comments
Reuters recently had the opportunity to speak with DeNA chief executive Isao Moriyasu. During the interview, Moriyasu stated that the company hopes to bring in over 3 billion yen ($25.02 million) a month from its new mobile partnership with Nintendo.
He said:
“We want to create games that will be played by hundreds of millions of people. We want to create multiple hit games rather than aiming to succeed with just one powerful IP element. We haven’t talked to Nintendo about targets, but at DeNA, our best-selling game brought in 3 billion yen a month, and we want to surpass that.”
There’s another interesting portion from Reuters’ report as well. The site claims – based on what analysts have said – that “Nintendo will likely earn around 70 percent” from its partnership with DeNA.
