Nintendo’s not taking any chances with its mobile-game plans

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Nintendo -- stamping on your hopes for an iOS port of Mario since 2007. Photo: Nintendo
Nintendo mascot Mario may be on his way to your iPhone Photo: Nintendo

Some comments from mobile-gaming platform DeNA chief Shintaro Asako suggest that Nintendo is taking a catch-all route when it starts bringing its beloved characters and properties to iOS and Android later this year.

Nintendo’s first five mobile offerings will all be in different genres to attract the maximum number of players across the board.

“I understand some people like [role-playing and] casual games,” Asako said at today’s Pocket Gamer Connect event in San Francisco. “That’s why we decided to work together to create five games, hitting on different genre-utilizing IPs. We want to make sure out of those five IP that we can end up attracting hundreds of millions of people.”

Nintendo and DeNA first announced the partnership in March, and we’re expecting the first game to drop by the end of the year. The remaining four will be out by April of 2017.

We don’t know which properties and genres are headed our way yet, but the wide-net approach makes sense considering how reluctant Nintendo has always been about developing for mobile. And it typically makes good business sense to reach as many people as possible, especially since the developer has the properties on hand to pull it off.

The five best-selling Nintendo franchises, according to Wikia, are the Super Mario series, Pokémon, Wii Sports, Mario Kart, and The Legend of Zelda , so they might be the most likely candidates for appearances on mobile.

The Zelda series in particular has proven pretty versatile for Nintendo. In addition to its core, single-player adventure titles, it’s also spawned multiplayer titles like the GameCube’s Four Swords Adventures; a shooting gallery-style entry for the Wii called Link’s Crossbow Training; and Hyrule Warriors, a tactical action game that has players participating in huge battles with hundreds of enemies.

Hopefully we hear more about Nintendo’s first iOS game soon, but in the meantime, we have plenty to keep us guessing and hoping.

Via: VentureBeat

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