I don’t really play smartphone games. I don’t have anything against them, nor am I so self-absorbed to think that they aren’t “real games.” They just never got their hooks into me like games about plumbers with very rough boots or space-faring anthropomorphic foxes did. Well, now Nintendo has the chance to change that, and the incentive is even stronger as they have announced their first games will be free with revenue being based purely on microtransactions.
DeNa and Nintendo reached an agreement earlier this year and plan to release five games by March 2017, though how many are in development has not been disclosed.
The first app will be Miimoto, which appears to not be a “game” but more a vague “entertainment app”. Both Nintendo and DeNa lost a good deal in share prices, partially due to moving the deadline to March of next year from the end of this year and partially since it doesn’t appear to be a proper game, which is what Nintendo is known for.
It’s no surprise that Nintendo is going with microtransactions, as that has been a business model that has sent numerous game companies soaring, but it begs to ask how their particular model will translate to that business tactic. At the moment though, we don’t have a traditional game so these questions may be moot.
It’s all too soon to see if this will help Nintendo’s ailing issues but it’s impossible to prevent speculation.
