The Wall Street Journal quoted sources as saying that Nintendo hopes to add some new partners based on DeNA, an existing partner and game developer, to speed up the pace of mobile game development.
Sources say Nintendo has negotiated with several handset developers for the time being but has not yet finalized it, including developers who have worked with Nintendo on games such as GungHo o Nline Entertainment, which is said to have been with Nintendo.
Nintendo started to develop hand-travel starting in 2015. In March 2015, Nintendo partnered with DeNA to launch the mobile game, which is planned to launch 5 mobile games by March of this year, each investing 2.2 billion yen 108 million yuan), Nintendo holds about 10% of DeNA's shares.
The two companies then collaborated to launch four games, Super Mario Parkour and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.
According to DeNA, they will also continue to work with Nintendo to develop hand tour.At the November earnings conference, DeNA said they plan to launch at least 2 mobile games each year, but the game's image and launch time is still in consultation with Nintendo in.
Now Nintendo hopes to introduce a new mobile game developers, the direct reason may be, DeNA's game development rhythm is far below expectations.Now DeNA company only took out 4 mobile games, only the last one based on the "Legend of Zelda" The development of mobile games is likely to be listed next year, this is much slower than expected, the introduction of new mobile game developers may help to launch rhythm accelerated.
Mobile Games did bring some new revenue growth to Nintendo.Today, in the first 6 months of this year, Nintendo's smart device and IP-related revenue of 17.9 billion yen (equivalent to about 1.05 billion yuan), an increase of 426% over the same period last year, , This part is mainly hand travel.
However, according to data from Game Tower's Sensor Tower, revenue from Nintendo's hand-made games is less than satisfactory, with the latest Animal Pocket Pocket Camp coming on line for 9 days, bringing in $ 10 million in revenue Under the same period of "Super Mario Parkour" (including iOS and Android platform) is 24 million US dollars, "Flames Heraldry Heroes" is 33 million US dollars Although the number of countries on the shelves, have an impact on income, but Nintendo The important game image Mario, income performance is not good enough.
According to App Annie's statistics, "Top Glory" and "Royal War" games have long been in the top 10 in the monthly revenue rankings, with none of the "Super Mario", "Hero of Fire Flames," etc. Top 10. Nintendo said in October, "Super Mario Parkour" revenue failed to meet their expectations.
However, compared to the Switch Game console , The hand-travel business is not very important for Nintendo.According to Nintendo data released, Switch sales of more than 2,000 yuan has reached 10 million units, single-player sales have brought 200 billion yuan. Switch Game console at least with a sold game.
But now Switch game big sell, Nintendo has ample cash flow, invest a sum of money to do hand tour is not a burden on Nintendo.