No, Nintendo. Putting mobile games alongside your old games on your hardware is not the same as putting your old games on mobile hardware alongside mobile games. It is, in fact, quite literally the opposite of what you should be doing.
But that’s exactly what they’re planning. According to Kotaku, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said in an Interview with Japanese publication Nikkei that the company will adapt more mobile games to their platforms like the Mario edition of Puzzle & Dragons.
Revamping existing, successful mobile games with Nintendo characters is a solid idea, but keeping them on Nintendo platforms only is maddening. These mobile adaptations, along with Nintendo’s past software library, are not necessary system-sellers. There’s no financial reason to keep them exclusive to Nintendo hardware. In fact, it’d likely make Nintendo way more money to release that kind of software elsewhere, where it’ll have a larger market and basically function as an advertisement—one people would pay money for—for Nintendo’s franchises.
I bought Mega Man II on my phone about two weeks ago. Why? I’ve been playing one big ad for classic video games—Super Smash Bros 3DS—non-stop for months. Luckily for me, Mega Man II is a Capcom game, so the decision to make it available on phones isn’t up to Nintendo. If it had been, I wouldn’t have had the chance to buy it, which just seems ridiculous in 2015.
That exact same effect in reverse could be working in Nintendo’s favor, if only they would only harness it. If they’d allow their IP to flourish across mobile platforms with older software and spinoffs, it might actually have a positive effect on console sales, which people mostly buy to play the big flagship titles of the franchises they love.
Nintendo doesn’t need to put games on mobile app stores to succeed. Not yet, anyway. They’re not doing as well as they’d like to be with current console sales, but the company has deep enough pockets to weather some turbulence. They’ll be fine, but they could be so much better than “fine” if they weren’t so stubborn, and that’s what’s so disappointing.
(via Business Insider)
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