I recently downloaded several original Wii titles for my Wii U, only to discover that I had to go out and buy $40 worth of additional controllers to play them. Try to play a Wii game on a newer Wii U and you’ll have to deal with screens like the one above, showing you which of Nintendo’s giant collection of controllers will and won’t work with the title.
Apple has made the purchasing experience comparatively frictionless.Īs crazy as this sounds, you have a better chance of easily controlling a 7-year-old iOS game on any current-generation iOS device than a 7-year-old Nintendo game on the Wii U. Buying games from Nintendo’s eShop (above) is a multi-step chore compared with two-tap App Store purchases, and games bought for one Nintendo device won’t run on others.
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How? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that GungHo’s embrace of iOS and Android gaming (like King Digital Entertainment’s Candy Crush-fueled $2.2-billion 2014) is responsible for this insane cashflow.ĭespite Nintendo’s insistence that it would “ruin the value of Nintendo’s IP” to offer compromised game experiences on “smart devices,” the reality is that there are now fewer compromises on iOS than on Nintendo’s own platforms. GungHo actually surpassed Nintendo’s market capitalization two years ago, despite Nintendo’s ownership of two current-gen gaming platforms and the world’s most valuable library of classic games.
As a sign of how messed up the video game industry has become, the simple matching Puzzle & Dragons game accounted for over 90% of GungHo’s $1.5 billion in 2014 revenue. version of GungHo’s mobile game Puzzle & Dragons (shown above). Nintendo’s first mobile game partner, GungHo, has made over $1 billion on a single mobile game.īack in January, Nintendo announced a partnership with GungHo - a company best known for free-to-play puzzle games and regionally popular RPGs - to release a Super Mario Bros. And there’s no business justification, either. iOS devices are powerful enough in every way to run 90% of Nintendo’s past games. So why am I angry? Because there’s no good reason for Nintendo to hold its titles back from the App Store any more. And Nintendo’s still not interested in bringing its backcatalog to hundreds of millions of App Store customers. That’s like Microsoft giving Hasbro the rights to make a Minecraft board game. These will be DeNA games using Nintendo characters. Sign me up!” But that’s not what’s happening here. “New, original games from Nintendo for iPhones? That means a new Legend of Zelda for iPad.
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“To ensure the quality of game experience that consumers expect from this alliance of Nintendo and DeNA, only new original games optimized for smart device functionality will be created,” DeNA said, “rather than porting games created specifically for the Wii U home console or the Nintendo 3DS portable system.” “We have no intention at all to port existing game titles for dedicated game platforms to smart devices,” said Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, “because if we cannot provide our consumers with the best possible play experiences, it would just ruin the value of Nintendo’s IP.” Unfortunately, because this is Nintendo we’re talking about, the reality is more complicated than the headline: Just think about it: Super Mario World on the iPad! Donkey Kong Country on the iPhone! That’s just what everyone has wanted! But there’s a catch…
The press release also says “gaming applications” rather than games, but a press release from Nintendo’s new mobile partner DeNA confirms that the companies will indeed produce mobile games together. Sure, the official Nintendo press release actually says “smart devices” including phones and tablets, but iPhones and iPads are a safe bet. At a press conference in Japan this morning, Nintendo announced its second collaboration with a mobile game publisher in two months, the headline from which was what millions of people have been waiting years to read: “Nintendo to start making iPhone games, including first-party IP like Mario.” But if I was mildly displeased with Nintendo as a company during its haughtiest years - the time when most of its key third-party developers walked away - I’m downright angry with it today. I’ve loved its games ever since the original Donkey Kong, owned every Nintendo console (including the Virtual Boy), and recommended the Wii U as the best game console for families and kids. My feelings for Nintendo are complicated.
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