Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima says company plans to release 2-3 mobile games a year, starting in 2017
Michael Simon / Macworld :
Context & Ripple Effects
Nintendo's mobile entry has been deliberate and slow: back in 2015 the company said its smartphone games would mostly be developed in-house, and September brought Shigeru Miyamoto explaining why Super Mario Run launched iOS-first. Today's announcement from president Tatsumi Kimishima turns that caution into a committed cadence — 2-3 mobile releases a year starting in 2017.
The significance is less the number than the pipeline it implies: Nintendo is promising its flagship characters will reach phones regularly, while still insisting on its own terms for how those games make money.
First-order effects
- Mobile publishers competing for App Store attention now face a steady stream of Nintendo-branded titles with some of gaming's most recognizable characters, rather than the one-off experiment of Super Mario Run.
Second-order effects
- Each release forces Nintendo to pick between the 'pay once' pricing it favors and the freemium standard of top-grossing mobile games — a tension that surfaces within months when Kimishima admits Super Mario Run's revenues fell short of expectations while defending the one-time purchase model.
Third-order effects
- The pattern ultimately bends back toward hardware: by 2023 Miyamoto states mobile apps will not be the primary path for future Mario games after two iOS titles see dwindling results, suggesting the annual cadence settles into a promotional supplement to console sales rather than a platform pivot.
The trend: Nintendo is institutionalizing mobile as a controlled, IP-protective extension of its console business — regular phone releases on its own monetization terms, never a replacement for hardware.