Nintendo planning to release five smartphone games by March 2017

Since announcing plans to enter the mobile gaming space, we haven't really heard much of Nintendo's new initiative to develop smartphone games in partnership with DeNA. We know that Nintendo hopes to release its first smartphone game featuring characters from one (or maybe more) of its iconic franchises this year, but they haven't been very specific.

That changed this week as Nintendo revealed during its earnings call plans to release "approximately" five titles for smart devices by the end of March 2017.

"You may think it is a small number, but when we aim to make each title a hit, and because we want to thoroughly operate every one of them for a significant amount of time after their releases, this is not a small number at all and should demonstrate our serious commitment to the smart device business," said company president Satoru Iwata.

Iwata continued that in addition to entertaining "hundreds of millions of people all around the world," the company hopes to make its mobile gaming initiative one of the core pillar's of Nintendo's revenue structure. Of course, that's easier said that done as Iwata also warned that the "severely competitive" smart device gaming market won't be so easy to crack. Even with franchises as popular as the ones Nintendo owns, simply putting a Mario game on a smart device won't be quick sell, despite what many think.

"As we confirmed on March 17, all of our IP can be considered for a smart device game," Iwata said. "On the other hand, since the game business on smart devices is already severely competitive, even with highly popular IP, the odds of success are quite low if consumers cannot appreciate the quality of a game.

"Also, if we were simply to port software that already has a track record on a dedicated game system, it would not match the play styles of smart devices, and the appropriate business models are different between the two, so we would not anticipate a great result. If we did not aim to achieve a significant result, it would be meaningless for us to do it at all. Accordingly, we are going to carefully select appropriate IP and titles for our smart device deployment."

Developing for smart devices can be a tricky thing, but I'm glad to see Nintendo is taking its time with these games than rushing them out to make a quick buck.

What Nintendo games would you like to see developed for smart devices?