Nintendo Looks To Win Back Gamers With Free Mini Games On Phones

Could we soon be seeing Mario and other Nintendo mainstays on our smartphones?

With Nintendo facing a tough year after publicly stating that instead of selling the estimated 9 million Wii U’s last year, (they only have reached less than 3 million consoles sold) Nintendo looks set to release for the first time mobile content. This information comes from the respected Japanese newspaper Nekkei, but bear in mind this is an unconfirmed report. In the report from the Nekkei states that Nintendo plans to release trailers for new games as well as “free-mini-games” that will be available on Android and iOS powered smartphones. This is the first time that Nintendo will release kind of service for smart phones, with Nekkei reporting that the idea is for Nintendo to release details of all new games coming to their systems as well as the character details, release dates and prices for all their new games.

Along with the all this new content about upcoming releases from Nintendo, the Nikkei also reports that the method behind Nintendo releasing free “mini-games” is that if players enjoy the mini-games they will then be able to purchase the actual software for their Nintendo hardware. For those out there thinking that Nintendo will just be releasing demos of their games and hoping that players will actually like the limited game play will be in for a pleasant surprise. According to the report from Nikkei these will be full free mini-games and not demos.

Nikkei’s past track record involving Nintendo information has been pretty solid and the report states that Nintendo will announce this new service later this week. Even Nintendo president has outlined the importance of using smartphones to promote their games, with this address to company investors last October about the surge of people using smartphones for gaming and entertainment;

“I feel that we should make an effort to take advantage of smart devices existence. For instance, we already made it possible to browse Wii U’s networking service called Miiverse on smart devices. Starting with this attempt, we are discussing among us how we can expand the use of smart devices to help drive the business of dedicated gaming systems. Twitter timelines filled with tweets about Monster Hunter and Pokémon can certainly help create awareness for the products, and we also know that many watch Nintendo Direct on their smart devices. Rather than simply viewing smart devices as competitors, we should consider ways in which we can use them for our business.”

Could Nintendo eventually go down the road Square Enix went down by releasing their games and other versions of their popular titles on iOS and Android? We’ll keep you updated on this story when more information becomes available.

Thank you Kotaku for the information provided 

Image courtesy of CNET