Sources: Nintendo is looking to form new partnerships with developers to produce mobile games faster, after a 2015 partnership with DeNA fell behind schedule
Takashi Mochizuki / Wall Street Journal :
Context & Ripple Effects
When Nintendo signed the 2015 DeNA partnership to bring Mario and its other IP to smartphones, then-CEO Satoru Iwata said most titles would be developed in-house, and president Tatsumi Kimishima later committed to a cadence of 2-3 mobile releases a year starting in 2017. Two-plus years in, the pipeline has slipped: per the Wall Street Journal's Takashi Mochizuki, the single-partner structure with DeNA is producing games slower than Nintendo planned.
That shortfall matters because mobile was pitched internally and externally as a recurring-revenue complement to hardware — early projections had the DeNA business doing at least $25M a month — and because Nintendo's IP is sitting idle on the largest gaming platform while the pace lags.
First-order effects
- DeNA loses its de facto exclusivity over Nintendo's mobile IP: new outside developers will be brought into production, diluting DeNA's gatekeeper position on titles built on Nintendo characters.
- Nintendo gets a faster path to honoring the 2-3-games-per-year commitment Kimishima made for 2017, which the DeNA-only pipeline has missed.
Second-order effects
- DeNA's economics shift from sole co-developer to one partner among several, pressuring the monthly revenue run-rate it set when it called $25M a month a conservative floor.
- Other Japanese mobile studios gain rare access to top-tier licensed IP, intensifying competition for Nintendo's attention and raising the bar on what DeNA must deliver to keep its share of the slate.
Third-order effects
- If multi-partner sourcing becomes the norm, Nintendo's mobile operation evolves from a bilateral alliance into a portfolio model where Nintendo owns the IP and roadmap while rotating development partners compete for slots — a structure closer to licensing than to the 2015 joint-development framing.
The trend: Nintendo's smartphone strategy is moving from an exclusive DeNA alliance toward a multi-developer pipeline as it tries to convert its IP into mobile output at the cadence it promised in 2015-2016.