Plenty of people say that Nintendo said it would never produce mobile games and that the current deal with Dena is a backtrack on that statement, and some kind of betrayal, but what is the truth behind it?
From what I can see, it seems all the 'Never' stories originated from a press conference in 2011 that got reported on by Nikkei.com. This is the Iwata quote that has been repeated all over the web:
"This is absolutely not under consideration. If we did this, Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo. Having a hardware development team in-house is a major strength. It's the duty of management to make use of those strengths. It's probably the correct decision in the sense that the moment we started to release games on smartphones, we'd make profits. However, I believe my responsibility is not to short-term profits, but to Nintendo's mid- and long-term competitive strength."
Notice how the word 'never' doesn't appear? What it makes me wonder is, what was the question that Iwata was answering, because no-one seems to have reproduced the question in english.
The page is in Japanese, and the full article is locked behind a membership scheme. I would try signing up to a trial membership to get access, but I can't work out how to do it from the UK.
Anyway, if you run the headline of the article through Google Translate, this is what you get:
"Iwata, Nintendo president not impossible game delivered to the smartphone"
Now obviously, Google Translate is crude and can't be relied upon, but the fact it says 'not impossible' seems to indicate exactly the opposite as to what has been reported and repeated since.
To me this issue is important because it has affected the reputation of Nintendo and Iwata. I've seen so many people criticising Nintendo for going back on 'never', but I've yet to see that it's justified.
Would be great if anyone has access to Nikkei and could translate the full article...
On a side note, shouldn't the mods create a new sub-forum soon for 'Mobile' games, to sit with all the other hardware specific sub-forums?
Well, they never said the word ''never'', they always said that there were no plans (at that time) to release software on mobile. Plans have changed, because an opportunity arose for Nintendo to make that possible with DeNA's help. That's all. People have misinterpreted the original source, as usual...
Thank you for this very timely opinion piece. The six or seven months it took you to finalize this after the initial announcement that Nintendo would be forming a partnership with DeNA reflects in the quality of it.
So Anakin kneels before Monster Mash and pledges his loyalty to the graveyard smash.
I think part of the PR surrounding mobile from Nintendo had always been tricky. They've always maintained that they weren't going to abandon the portable hardware market. So I'd assume that's quite a bit of what people were confused about. People assumed that them saying they were committed to making games for their own dedicated gaming hardware meant that they weren't going mobile.
Of course now we know that they're doing mobile content and are still committed to dedicated gaming hardware. Which is what the NX announcement was about. With that said, some still seem to think they're going to give up on portable gaming hardware. So I guess people read into this sort of thing whatever they wish. I guess there's a fair chance that I'm doing the same.
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"Don't stir the pot" is a nice way of saying "they're too dumb to reason with"
It's some way outside my comfort zone, but the "ありえず" bit at the end is the negative of "ありえる", which means 'probable, possible, or likely'. This is referring to the previous word, "配信", which is simply (and accurately) 'distribution'.
So basically, I'm fairly confident Google Translate has got the wrong end of the stick. The more accurate translation would be ONE of "Distribution to Smartphones (is) not probable/possible/likely". This fits better with the overall tone and message of the article better also (basically Mr. Iwata saying, "No plans currently").
Obviously, the devil is in the detail, and depending on which of those you take and the duration you assume they apply for, the meaning can range from, "No plans for Smartphone distribution for the time being" to "Nintendo games impossible on Smartphones forever. Never happening, not ever".
It would take someone with a more subtle understanding of the language AND the context in which that was spoken to shed any more light on the statements, but for what it's worth, I think the 'never' interpretation is really gambling with the translation, and isn't a good reflection of what was said.
What's more, that's just a summary-title that Nikkei has made up, not Iwata's actual words, so there's another layer of confusion and interpretation.
For now, I think the message that they really didn't have any plans for Smartphone distribution, and really weren't expecting that to change, is all that can be salvaged from that quote.
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Topic: Nintendo: 'never' making mobile games?
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