For the
gamers, and most especially those who will love to have the popular Nintendo Mario
on their Smartphones, the time has come to stay when the deal is done.
Nintendo
shook the gaming world today when it announced a partnership with DeNA, a Japanese company that
makes free-to-play games for mobile phones. Calls for Nintendo to make
smartphone games have been a regular feature of media coverage and the
company’s investor meetings, but CEO Satoru Iwata (pictured above right) has dismissed them at every turn, saying that mobile games risk
cannibalizing and devaluing Nintendo’s valuable, popular characters. So with
today’s shock announcement, has Iwata lost it, or at least gone back on his
word?
The answer
is neither. We haven’t seen the games that will result from the deal yet, but
Iwata laid out his thinking with clarity and eloquence on stage in Tokyo today,
leaving me in little doubt that the DeNA tie-up makes sense for Nintendo’s
future.
Iwata began by acknowledging that Nintendo had a
difficult time shifting from the wildly popular DS and Wii to their successors,
the 3DS and Wii U, which coincided with the rise of smartphones. But although
this caused some observers to believe that dedicated gaming consoles would
inevitably get cannibalized by mobile devices, Iwata identified a crucial
difference between Nintendo and its competitors: that Nintendo produces, by
far, the most important content for its various systems.
"We do not share this pessimistic view of the
future for dedicated video game systems."
No one ever calls for Sony to bring Uncharted
to the iPhone, or for Microsoft to release Gears of War on Android. But
Nintendo has several beloved, long-running franchises that it keeps exclusive
to its hardware in the same way, which only heightens the demands for, say, Super
Mario Bros. on the iPhone. "We recognize that our business model of
producing both video game hardware and software is effective even today,"
Iwata said, "and we do not share this pessimistic view of the future for
dedicated video game systems." In other words, while smartphones and
tablets may have captured certain casual users that might have bought a Wii or
DS were it still 2007, the base of people willing to buy Nintendo hardware to
play Nintendo games remains large enough for a sustainable business.
To that end, Iwata confirmed that Nintendo is
working on a next-generation dedicated video game platform with a
"brand-new concept," codenamed NX. The release is likely years away —
Nintendo says it won’t announce further details until 2016 — but the mention is
significant in the context of the DeNA deal. It demonstrates that the company
isn’t going to leave its current fans behind, nor is it going to stop focusing
on games consoles.
But that doesn’t mean Nintendo can or should ignore
mobile devices entirely. "It is structurally the same as when Nintendo,
which was founded 125 years ago when there were no TVs, started to aggressively
take advantage of TV as a communication channel," Iwata said today,
referencing the company’s earlier decades as a maker of toys and playing cards.
"Now that smart devices have grown to become the window for so many people
to personally connect with society, it would be a waste not to use these devices."
Mobile gaming has simply become too big to ignore, despite Nintendo’s previous
misgivings, and the obvious read is that this represents a major backtrack.
Iwata’s pledge not to port games to smartphones is
significant.
Iwata’s pledge not to port Nintendo games directly
to smartphones is significant, though. Much as you may think you want a
touchscreen version of Mario Kart 64, such a move would inevitably fail
to meet Nintendo’s standards. From the NES D-pad to the Wii remote, Nintendo
has consistently tied its control methods to its software design, and crudely
cramming legacy software onto a pane of glass was never going to work. "If
we cannot provide our consumers with the best possible play experiences, it
would just ruin the value of Nintendo’s IP," Iwata said today.
Instead, Nintendo and DeNA will develop new
software from the ground up for mobile devices, which leaves the two companies
free to try new business models as well — it’s difficult to sell paid software
on iOS and Android these days, even if you are Nintendo. But Iwata downplayed
the prospect of using the traditional free-to-play mechanics seen in DeNA games
like Rage of Bahamut, Magic & Cannon or Final Fantasy
Record Keeper, even though Nintendo itself has experimented with the style
in certain 3DS games.
Whatever the two companies decide, the partnership
is one that makes sense; like Apple’s arrangement with IBM, it benefits two
parties that have little overlap but a lot to gain from each other. Nintendo is
perhaps the most acclaimed video game developer in the world and has a
second-to-none portfolio of IP, but is famously terrible at the internet and
has almost no experience working on platforms other than its own. The recent shutdown of Club Nintendo is evidence of
this; DeNA and Nintendo are set to launch a new cross-platform membership
service this year that will "create a connection between Nintendo and each
individual consumer regardless of the device the consumer uses," in
Iwata’s words. The service will also be a "core element" of the
upcoming NX platform; if this helps shift Nintendo’s draconian policies toward
digital software ownership, it alone will be a massive win for customers.
DeNA is in need of a hit — what better
differentiator than Nintendo?
DeNA, meanwhile, brings an understanding of the
mobile market and social gaming that Nintendo has lacked. "DeNA’s
expertise lies in, for example, the infrastructure technology that can handle a
massive amount of traffic," CEO Isao Moriyasu (pictured top left) said
today. "We are also able to manage live operation by analyzing user
activities and quickly reflecting the insight to improve our service." The
company is in need of a hit, though — Japanese games like Mixi’s Monster
Strike, GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons, and Line’s Disney Tsum Tsum have been
more popular than anything on DeNA’s Mobage service of late. But what better
differentiator than Nintendo property?
Ultimately, the success of this deal will depend on
whether Nintendo is able to adapt its peerless development ability to mobile
platforms with DeNA’s technical support, and it’s hard to ascertain that
without seeing the software first-hand. But I walked away from the press
conference today impressed with Iwata’s vision: one which acknowledged
Nintendo’s weaknesses, identified its strengths, and detailed a way to
alleviate the former without compromising the latter. We won’t get Super
Mario Bros. on smartphones — we might get something a lot better.
Thanks to verge for this reportage.
I will love to have this game played on my
SmartPhone. Won’t you? :D
