Nintendo Co yesterday dropped its resistance to using its characters on mobile devices as the maker of Mario and Zelda teams with DeNA Co to develop new games for smartphones and tablet computers.
The Japanese companies also agreed to a capital alliance that will see them each buy ¥22 billion (US$181 million) stakes in each other, Kyoto-based Nintendo said in a statement. The two companies will develop and operate new membership services offering game applications based on Nintendo’s character lineup.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata had stuck with a strategy of selling his games only on Nintendo devices even as consumers shifted to playing on smartphones and tablets.
Photo: AFP
The company halved its operating earnings forecast for this fiscal year to ¥20 billion and lowered its sales outlook by 7 percent amid stagnating sales of its Wii U console.
“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 companies said in the release.
Iwata has sought to maintain the company’s iconic characters exclusively for in-house devices as it counts on demand for software to drive hardware sales. The stance was criticized after the company posted an annual loss last year, just its second unprofitable year in two decades.
Nintendo last year added a new line of interactive figurines called Amiibo to help kickstart the Wii U. Players can use the figurines to enter a Nintendo character into a game through the Wii U’s GamePad tablet.
The Wii U struggled to gain traction after its 2012 debut amid a shortage of new software titles, while Sony Corp and Microsoft Corp lured serious gamers to their machines when they were released about a year later.
There are a total of 9.3 million units of the Wii U in the hands of gamers worldwide as of Feb. 28, according to VGChartz.com, which tracks industry sales. That compares with 20.2 million for Sony’s PlayStation 4 and 11.6 million for Microsoft’s Xbox One.
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