Nintendo and Smartphones: The Relationship That Should Happen

Nintendo, listen very closely.





There is a way to make money, increase the exposure of your product, and it can all be done at a minimal cost.





You need to listen closely, because you are very good at neglecting new technology and shun a unique ides or concept that isn’t yours. The concepts of CDs and online play were new technologies that you didn’t acknowledge and it ultimately hurt you. Listen, closely.



Time to accept the smartphones. Seriously.



The smartphones is the final frontier in the Nintendo gaming industry that has yet to be touched. The androids, IPads, IPhones, LGs, and other phones that make regular phones look extremely ancient is the final corner that you have yet to scratch to profit. You can assume that these phones are attempting to kill your business with the 3DS, but truth be told the 3DS currently:



1) Has the best-selling video game in the world with Pokemon X/Y
2) Is the best-selling console in the world
3) Has sold over 42 million copies
4) Has 85% of the handheld gaming market share.


The 3DS is not in danger, your profits are. This message to you isn’t an attempt to save the WiiU (Because it requires far more than smartphone dependency for this to happen), it’s an attempt to gain some extra money while spreading the exposure of your IPs and potentially even provide a more stable business model that doesn’t rely so much on nostalgia.


It is time for Apple, Samsung, and all the other phone-making companies to have access to your old catalog of video games from the NES to the end of the SNES, maybe even the N64. It is time for you to have the ability to purchase Super Mario Land 2 from the online store on your Galaxy, and then buy a small attachment piece resembling a controller of some sort so you can get your Mario fix on your phone during break, while waiting for someone, etc.


It is time for IPads to have the ability to have a Nintendo section in the App Store so you can download Link to the Past and then purchase a controller that connects to the USB port so you can play the game in high quality in the larger screen. If not Link to the Past then maybe one of the hundreds of Nintendo games released in the 80s and 90s.


Worldwide the amount of smartphones shipped in 2013 reached a staggering 990 million copies. I don’t even have to post another statistic to prove just how important it is for Nintendo to make any sort of effort to reach out to this audience. These smartphones are as powerful as ever and are more than capable of playing Nintendo games with no issues whatsoever. For crying out loud, Vice City can be played on phones nowadays. Surely it can crank out Mario Kart 64 with no issues whatsoever.




Some can argue that with the games being available on phones, it will diminish the sales of the Virtual Console on the WiiU and the 3DS. But the 3DS and WiiU should not be dependent on old games to be reliable and relevant, it’s the new software that runs the sales of the consoles. I assure you the Playstation Network’s list of old games is the reason why the PS3 snuck into second place in the seventh generation and wound up only 20 million sales behind the Wii. And I assure you that the Virtual Console in the Nintendo Wii itself, which was ultimately uninspiring, was not the main reason why the console sold over 100 million worldwide.


Virtual Console, still layers underneath its potential, should be icing on the cake, not the flavor of the entire cake. But this icing should be shared on multiple platforms to give Nintendo some of the necessary extra money required to cover the losses of the current generation. This icing should be shared to give fleeting franchises like Metroid and Zelda some new life and some new recognition amongst the casual crowd. It may seem unlikely, but there is a heavy percentage of the world that has yet to play Link to the Past and Super Metroid, two of among the greatest games ever made and cornerstones of their franchises.


It is very simple: sell your old games at cheap prices towards hardware with an install base of nearly a billion people. They do not have to be new games, they do not have to be totally updated. Just a bit of tweaking, maybe use some outside help with the emulating, and the possibilities are wonderful. If just 4% of smartphone users downloaded Yoshi’s Island at $5 then that would make Nintendo a total of:


Get this:


$198,000,000.


Just one game.




Nintendo, why are you not doing this?