Nintendo to Make Games for the Apple iPhone?

iphonemario.jpgA few days ago, a rumor started circulating that Apple and Nintendo may be teaming up in a fashion which would find Nintendo delivering games for the iPhone. The rumor is definitely enough to perk up a few heads, but unfortunately comes from an unnamed, unconfirmed source.

Regardless, the report - out of tech blog NoHeat - indicates that Nintendo and Apple have reached an agreement in which Nintendo would license a limited portion of it's content for use on the iPhone.

As for how the games will work, the NoHeat report describes an on screen directional pad which would be used to provide controls. One can only assume touchscreen buttons will accompany the touchscreen d-pad.

According to the rumor, the iPhone Nintendo games will be sold through iTunes at a $29 price point. As far as what titles will be sold, no specifics have been provided. It was mentioned, however, that the available titles will "cater to an older audience" - which suggests traditional titles such as the pictured Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, and Zelda.

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Comments

$29? Seems VERY high.

That can't be right. Mobile games are normally much cheaper.

This is totally wrong. Nintendo would sooner give up its fight in the hardware market than rent out its games to other people. There is no question about it. Anyone who has followed Nintendo's corporate style knows that they have NEVER made a game for another system. EVER. They make their own hardware and sell the software with it. It would be like Apple allowing Mac OS to be put on PCs. Does Apple do that? As soon as Apple starts leasing out its OS to PCs Nintendo will follow suit. Until then, dream on iPhone fans cause you ain't getting Mario.

I believe that NONONO has a point. Why the hell would Nintendo release games for Apple? That would cannibalize sales of their DS (the DS also being the most profitable item Ninty has for them right now). I like the Apple analogy cause it fits perfectly. I'll eat my hat if it happens but I see it as a super slim chance.

If the game is minor enough, it won't eat into DS sales and should actually fuel them more. But the price would have to come down to below $10 IMHO.

No, Nintendo have released their games on others' consoles. In the early 80s when they had the Famicom in Japan it had various arcade ports like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros, and when those were brought over to the States, Nintendo didn't have the NES at the time, so they released those games on console like the Atari and Colecovision.
But, this iPhone rumour is not true. Nintendo have reached huge profit without much output. That shows the worth of DS and Wii, as Nintendo acknowledge that had they not made Zelda Twilight Princess they could have made about 8 smaller games on DS, similar to Brain Training and Nintendogs, which would have yielded far greater profits. But DS and Wii are still massively successful, even with this limited input, made worse by their halving of Nintendo's creative output. Now consider their full, consolidated output. Far greater, especially considering that Nintendo have done the hardware launches and got both off the ground and in the air. Now they are going to fly with it, especially because of the gradual turnaround of the third party market to Wii and DS, which may seem gradual, but for a huge industry wide change, it's happening pretty quick.
So Nintendo are going to run with the ball now, not take a risk by licensing IP valuable to the future, or by cutting down on their potential output for Wii and DS, for benefit of hardware that won't profit them. They've taken their risk with the Wii and DS and the gamble has paid off, now they shall milk their consoles for all their worth and benefit from their risktaking, not take another risky venture entirely, which would negate what they have done with the Wii and DS.It's time for them to consolidate, on what they have already expanded into, not to grow even more. Can you imagine the corporate Nintendo accepting an iPhone offer at this point, when they are in control, and can use their development for their own hardware? The only time they'd have taken a move such as this is if they were shaky in the portable business. They are looking after number one now, and will do as they will and not fall at the mercy of an alien piece of hardware.

P.S the website is under construction so please don't bother going on it for at least one month. Also, I had to type this long post out twice, because on the Security Code, I put an O in where there wasn't one and it stopped sending and wouldn't do anything so I had to refresh and the text cleared. The first post was better, structurally and linguistically, plus it put my points across better. So when you read this post, just double how wonderful it is in your minds to effectively grasp the greatness of my lost first post.

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