Nintendo May Go Mobile This Year (But Not In The Way We'd All Like)

OMG! Mario on iOS! Not! According to a brief in Japan’s Nikkei (translated by TC writer Serkan Toto), Nintendo will announce plans to use Android and iOS as marketing vehicles, allowing Link, Mario, and the various and sundry Pokemen to appear on mobile devices to promote the company’s games.

Legend Of Zelda on the iPhone this ain’t.

Nintendo will announce the plans in an investor briefing this Thursday. “To be more concrete, The Nikkei writes that Nintendo wants to use smartphones to expand its potential user base by spreading information about new game releases, i.e. by using video to introduce future titles. (This will probably happen through some kind of official Nintendo app.)” wrote Toto.

In addition, Nintendo is said to be planning to put so-called “mini games” on smartphones, playable demos of console games – content that can only be purchased in full on Nintendo hardware. The reasoning here is to give smartphone-only players a taste of the experience without making the actual game available on non-Nintendo devices and convert these users into Nintendo customers.According to The Nikkei, this content will be entirely free, and Nintendo is not planning to offer paid or freemium games on smartphones at the moment.

This is obviously all conjecture at this point but if even the barest hint of Nintendo appears on mobile devices I suspect the fanbois will go mental. It will be fascinating to watch Nintendo’s first trepidatious steps into treacherous waters, to be sure.