My cousin, who had to buy a WiiU after playing Nintendo Land, kept asking me if the eShop (she saw I had Edge on my WiiU) was full of free mobile games. I told her that only a handful of games were exactly in the "mobile" price range at the time (mainly from the launch sales from Two Tribes, plus the freemium TankTankTank).

The weird thing is that she was expecting this due to the Gamepad controller and the mobile culture in kids these days... and I was thinking with Nintendo weighing future options, if they would develop further in this direction? Instead of releasing those games on the App Store, that many analyst want them to do, they could push their own digital eShop even further with their franchises but in lighter form and even more gameplay focused. Maybe not go fully into mobile type pricing, but a Steam kind of catalogue with loads of digital content and sales.

This together with Nintendo's VC collection, and content that is finally tied to your account, could make the digital jump much more accessible. EDIT: And create an intermediate entry level between mobile and retail games.

I could see it working. They should let Wario run the company.

Well maybe, they have been stating a lot that the they want to do something with mobile and they did buy a nice chunk of share on a mobilesk company before but I am not too sure... The only free-to-play game on the wiiU atm is Tank! Tank! Tank! and the rest goes from $2-$60...

With that being said, I do think Nintendo won't do this for a while, even as far as to not do this till their next gen console/handheld... I don't think they understand the android/apple way of doing things quite yet... I would even say that the Sony has more chance of doing something like this with the Vita than Nintendo if they aren't doing it already

Great Idea though

Could be an ace in the hole. Open up development to whomever wants to port their mobile games to Wii U and sell 'em for a dollar. It worked for Xbox 360 and their hundred and hundreds of indie games without hurting the "real' games.

I think it could and should be a big part of their future.

They should remake a bunch of classic titles with modern graphics and sound. Games like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros, Zelda and other oldies. They could be available for Wii U or for a new tablet they may be working on and sell for $5. They would be more fun than most stuff on mobiles as is, and could also make new, original titles in a similar style. These games should be mixed with several key AAA titles released per year.

Every console has their own digital shop which they would love to turn into an app store, and it looks like they are all aiming for that. So instead of investing in one big AAA game, they could make 5 different eShop ones, less risk and more content.

There really is a market for content between mobile apps and retail games, and we see that in the digital/indie games on Steam. It could be late for whenever Nintendo is ready to lauch this, and these kind of changes take a lot of time, but they could start developing this with the current 3DS and WiiU eShops. Heck, even the 3DS eShop had nice Nintendo content in its first years.

i dont see that as a good way. mobilegames are a bubble that wll burst soon. microtransactions will not stay for ever, the people are allready learning that free to play is scam most of the times.

I would enjoy it for sure and hope it happens.

Not a bunch of random mobile games because I have a phone & tablet for that but a bunch of smaller Wii U exclusives would be cool.

As long as we continue to get the regular retail games too. These smaller games would just fill in the gaps.

Yeah, smaller games to stop with the droughts and third party holes. And as time goes on and the eShop ecosystem grows, they  could even skip releasing retail games through shops and distribute the titles themselves. Could be better for the next system in which they return to cartridges and also offer the opportunity to ship games in SD cards.

Did you check out NES Remix? Although it's 15 dollars, it is in line with what you are saying.

As long as they still have larger/AAA games, then that would be great. I wouldn't be nearly as big of a fan if they only had small games.