Nintendo

After dipping its toes in the mobile game waters by releasing Pokémon TCG Online to the iPad, Nintendo has decided to team up with the Japanese game developer DeNA to release more games to "smart devices." Nintendo will create new titles instead of porting existing content over to smarthphones and tablets.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said that talks about bringing its characters to mobile devices began 2010, but things were not finalized until last year. This is a stark contrast to an interview he did in 2011 with the Japanese news site Nikkei, when he stated that NIntendo would never consider making games for mobile devices. Iwata believed that mobile games would only bring temporary gain and not help sustain NIntendo's core business model of selling home game consoles, but he has since changed his tune. Iwata now thinks mobile titles will work as a "bridge” to help people buy more physical Nintendo products.

Fans of Nintendo can look forward to the release of an iOS app in the coming months. Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo confirmed to Nikkei that the app was currently in development. An announcement is expected after the fiscal year ends in March.

While this may break new ground for Nintendo, Iwata described a social app based on Mii characters, not a gaming app. This is in line with previous statements from the company, signaling it has no intention of bringing popular game titles to smartphones or tablets. Nintendo will continue to make games only for its own devices and consoles.

Rumors of Nintendo porting their most famous titles to iOS have been floating around since the first iPhone was launched in 2007. As it turns out, the App Store is not the place to find Super Mario Brothers or Zelda. Nintendo watchers are at it again after the publication of a patent filed by Nintendo titled "Hand-held Video Game Platform Emulation".

The focus of the patent is on emulating Nintendo game platforms such as the Game Boy Advance on various modern devices. iPhones and iPads could be included in the broad definition, as well as built-in screens in airplane and train seats. The patent explains that software emulation would model "a native platform liquid crystal display controller using a sequential state machine" and provide high quality graphics and sound.

Anyone who tries to avoid pirating music, movies and video games will tell you sometimes companies make it hard. For example, when a studio refuses to release a specific film to DVD or Blu-ray fans have no choice but to download it illegally or keep a VCR handy. Or how about when you try to start watching a new television series, and only episodes 4, 5, 6, 22 and 24 are available On Demand? These scenarios can be frustrating and it sometimes forces customers to search for alternatives such as video game emulators.

As most iOS gamers already know, NIntendo refuses to release its titles to mobile devices. Nintendo's no mobile game policy has caused some fans to use emulators such as GBA4iOS to port Nintendo games to their iPhone or iPad. Last night, GBA4iOS creator Riley Testut confirmed via Twitter that Nintendo sent a DMCA notice "requesting gba4iosapp.com to be shut down".

CEO and president Satoru Iwata, confirmed at an investor briefing today that Nintendo plans to start embracing smartphone and tablet devices later this year. The company will not release existing games for smartphones as some had hoped, but instead, it will launch "service" apps to “make connections with customers."

The company is not ruling out using its existing characters or creating some kind of games, but the apps will primarily be used to introduce customers to Nintendo products. Iwata also said the company will not abandoned the hardware business, but hopes embracing smart devices will "attract consumer attention" to the Nintendo platform. The apps will also support the Wii U's Nintendo Network ID (NNID) log-in system, which was recently introduced to the 3DS portable console.