Nintendo revealing first smartphone game tomorrow; dropping this year
Tomorrow, Nintendo is dropping the curtain on its first smartphone game. Which will probably sell a zillion copies (units?).
Nintendo will debut its first game designed for smartphones tomorrow, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
The company, which posted its second quarter earnings today, announced that it will discuss its inaugural mobile title as well as elaborate upon its financial report in a press conference tomorrow.
The WSJ article mentions that the mobile game, developed in part by Nintendo’s new partner DeNA Co., will see a release “by the end of this year.” Four other mobile titles from the pair will join this one “by March 2017.”
Nintendo has kept largely quiet about the nature of its smartphone titles, but Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime shared with Polygon a few details of what to expect back in June. “We’ve announced that Mr. Kono, from Mario Kart fame, is going to be our lead developer on this,” Fils-Aime said, adding that the ultimate goal of Nintendo’s mobile strategy is “to drive people back to our core video system business whether it’s handheld or console.”
Although the press conference won’t be livestreamed, the article mentions that a return of the online Nintendo Direct presentations is imminent. Nintendo’s recently anointed president Tatsumi Kimishima said that the company will host a Direct “by the end of the year.”
The late Satoru Iwata was the familiar face behind these Nintendo Direct streams, which have been the company’s primary method of showing off new games for the last three years. The last of these presentations was held in June during E3 2015, and their fate has been questioned since Iwata’s untimely death in July.