The plumber may finally be ready to make his debut on the iPhone and Android. Nintendo long ago announced that it had partnered with mobile developer DeNA to start making original titles for mobile devices, but its first title, Miitomo, is sort of weird in a classic Nintendo way. We're likely to get something a little more familiar soon, according to the company. In the wake of a pretty disappointing quarterly report, the Wall Street Journal reports that Nintendo has promised its next mobile game will feature one of its "best-known characters."
Mario is obviously Nintendo's most famous face, but the company has some other options to choose from. We might be seeing Link, Donkey Kong, Kirby, Yoshi, or, you know, Tingle or something weird. But I still think Mario is the safest bet: the guy has been in so many spin-offs and weird titles that the property is pretty comfortable with basically anything, and Nintendo, at this point, would be wise to either go big or go home where mobile gaming is concerned. And if you're Nintendo, going big means Mario.
It leads us to wonder: what would a mobile Mario game look like? I seriously doubt it will be a traditional 2D platform, both because Nintendo has to save something for its own hardware, and because the company knows that sort of game just isn't quite right for mobile. He could follow his former nemesis Sonic and enter the endless runner genre, but I don't see something like that having much success. Or he could go back into his own ouvre and perform an adaptation of Dr. Mario? Like I said, Mario's been in just about every game genre under the sun already, so he's got plenty to choose from.
What remains to be seen is how this will impact Nintendo's handheld business, which has survived far longer than anyone thought possible based largely on the strength of its original IPs. Will people still want to buy 3Ds's (or portable NXes) if they can get a true Nintendo experience on a smartphone instead? It's a risk, but one that I think Nintendo has to take, right now. The company is in a somewhat tenuous position, and this is the sort of thing people have been talking about for ages. It can't replace the sort of money you get from hardware sales, but it could at the very least be a small, steady revenue stream in uncertain times.
