Nintendo games are timeless — except when it comes to the platforms you can play them on. The company has beloved brands and a philosophy of audience accessibility, but has continued to demand that fans invest in dedicated hardware to play its games, even as a whole new generation of players increasingly gravitates toward mobile platforms.
But you might soon be able to see some of those nostalgic characters on your smartphone or tablet. Nintendo today announced it would partner with Japanese mobile game giant DeNA to create new games based on the company's brands.
Lots of industry watchers are wondering what took them so long. Nintendo used to thrive by selling and developing games for portable hardware systems like the DS, but left opportunities for rapidly-growing mobile platforms on the table. Importantly, too, DeNA and Nintendo will also partner on an online service that will connect players across existing Nintendo devices with mobile users. And that makes sense, because a cross-platform social ecosystem is important to players of modern games, versus the "walled garden" approach that drove hardware competition in the past.
