Nintendo seems like the perfect company to enter the mobile gaming market but for one reason or another, perhaps not wanting to compete with its own mobile gaming devices, Nintendo has yet to touch the mobile market. That’s all about to change, however, as the company has partnered with DeNA in a deal that the two companies expect will bring in somewhere around $25 million per month.
Japanese online game maker DeNA Co Ltd on Wednesday said it wants its new partnership with gaming giant Nintendo Co Ltd to yield titles that bring in over 3 billion yen ($25.02 million) a month. The alliance, announced on March 17, will bring Nintendo characters such as Super Mario and Donkey Kong to smartphones, and see their jointly developed games available through phones and tablets as well as Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS consoles. DeNA Chief Executive Isao Moriyasu said the partners would release their first game later this year, but was coy on which character from Nintendo’s trove of intellectual property (IP) would be featured. “We want to create games that will be played by hundreds of millions of people,” Moriyasu told Reuters in an interview. “We want to create multiple hit games rather than aiming to succeed with just one powerful IP element.” “We haven’t talked to Nintendo about targets, but at DeNA, our best-selling game brought in 3 billion yen a month, and we want to surpass that,” he said, referring to smartphone game Kaito Royale which was turned into a TV series.