Video game company announces plans to expand into Mobile Gaming

Nintendo has long resisted the call of mobile gaming, but today it entered the space in a big way.

The company has announced that it will team up with DeNA, a major Japanese mobile gaming company, to make smartphone games featuring Nintendo characters.

The two companies "intend to jointly operate new gaming applications featuring Nintendo IP, which they will develop specifically for smart devices," according to a Nintendo statement.

Although the games will leverage Nintendo properties, they won't be straight ports.

"To ensure the quality of game experience that consumers expect from this alliance of Nintendo and DeNA, only new original games optimized for smart device functionality will be created, rather than porting games created specifically for the Wii U home console or the Nintendo 3DS portable system," says DeNA in a statement.

Seeking to put off questions that Nintendo's future would be entirely mobile, Iwata says that Nintendo is still very much in the "dedicated video game system market", and that their next piece of gaming hardware is code-named the "NX", with a "brand-new concept."

"Nintendo has decided to deploy its video game business on smart devices, but it is not because we have lost our passion or vision for the business of dedicated video game systems", he said.

"On the contrary, because now we have decided on how we will make use of smart devices, we have come to hold an even stronger passion and vision for the dedicated video game system business than before."

No further details were revealed, and NX will be some way off, Iwata says the company hopes to announce more next year.

Nintendo and DeNA will also develop a cross-platform service that runs across smartphones, tablets, PCs, and Nintendo's own devices, this is set to launch September, this year.

Nintendo is taking a 10 percent stake in DeNA, while DeNA is buying 1.24 percent of Nintendo.

Nintendo has flirted with mobile gaming before, in a tie-up with GungHo, the company will release a Mario-themed version of Japanese mobile smash hit Puzzle & Dragons for 3DS next month, and recent experiments like Pokémon Shuffle have adopted similar free-to-play business models.