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Nintendo And DeNA Announce Alliance To Bring New Games To Mobile Devices
At long last, we know how Nintendo will be proceeding in the mobile space. Today, the house of Mario and DeNA, a major publisher of mobile titles worldwide, announced an alliance to bring Nintendo IP to mobile devices.
The games that DeNA will be working on are completely new, rather than ports of existing titles. Nintendo's entire slate of intellectual property is open to the mobile company to tap for its creations. Nintendo continues to hope that its mobile presence will drive interest in its dedicated video game console devices, something the company has stated as a goal for entering the smartphone and tablet space.
In addition, DeNA will be developing a membership service for Nintendo that will be accessible on PC, 3DS, and Wii U. The as yet unnamed service is targeted for launch later this year, however it was not specified if this will be a regional rollout or if the duo will attempt worldwide release.
As part of this arrangement, the two companies are exchanging capital investments. Nintendo is set to acquire 15,081,000 shares of DeNA stock (approximately 10 percent of outstanding shares) at a total value of ¥22 billion ($181.36 million). DeNA will acquire the same cash value of Nintendo stock, totaling 1,759,400 shares or 1.24 percent of outstanding shares.
DeNA recently released a Transformers mobile title and is working with Square to release Final Fantasy Record Keeper. No specific titles have yet been announced for the partnership.
Our Take
This is, put simply, enormous news. Nintendo investors have been clamoring for the company to go after a piece of the huge mobile pie. This arrangement sets up Nintendo to leverage its characters without sacrificing its back catalog or dedicated hardware experiences. What remains to be seen is how Nintendo will transition mobile consumers to gaming hardware (whether 3DS or Wii U).
Equally exciting is the new membership service which may be the replacement for Club Nintendo. This could very well be a step toward the account-based licensing system that Nintendo so desperately needs. All together, this is a big day for both Nintendo and DeNA and could set both on a path to even bigger success.
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