Anyone with some business sense could see that this was bound to happen.

I kept reading that Ninty has 10 billion dollars in the bank, that they have nothing to worry, that they are happy with wiiu/3ds sales, that there is no way it will go 3rd party (that Sony will go 3rd party first, since they're already releasing games for mobile phones), etc. That, to me, made no sense. When a company is not doing well, they're not gonna sit there and keep losing money or keep making tiny profits when there is a possibility to make much more.

People called this and they were right. Now, whether this will be handled well by Ninty and be successful in the end is another story. I see it as a step towards the right direction for now.

Gratz. Step one to become 3rd party successfully completed :)

There's actually quite a number of Nintendo IP I could see working on iOS/Android, aside from the obvious Nintendogs + cats and what not.

Punch-Out - For $0.99 download the game, pay to get extra bosses.

Touch Zelda - Continuing the now defunct DS-style of Zelda. F2P, you start with maybe one dungeon, but have to pay to get other items/dungeons.

Mario Maker - Create courses/levels on your iPad, come home and play them on your Wii U/NX.

Touch Kirby - Like the recently released Rainbow Curse title on the Wii U, could see a new Kirby game on iOS/Android similar to that.

Wario Ware - Obvious.

Mario Party - Start with a few mini-games, more available as DLC as time goes on.

this

It's just gonna be some puzzle game shovelware.
Nintendo makes a few bucks off it, maybe gets a bit more brand recognition from some of the younger kids, it's a win-win.

I don't think so. Nintendo didn't spend $100 million to invest in this DeNA company just to make some puzzle games. 

It will be all Nintendo IP just reimagined/reworked for the smartphone format. 

I think perhaps even certain subsets of Nintendo IP ... like the Touch Zelda and Kirby games will continue mainly through mobile. 

Why is everyone focusing on a few mobile games being licensed to another developer, and not the "new multi-device membership service" that was just announced? That sounds like a pretty big deal.

I'd really hoped Nintendo tried with their own product first. Nintendo's creativity do not belong among free "game" apps. The casual smartphone gamer moves on from fad to fad (see how badly Rovio and Zynga are doing today).

I think HTC, ASUS, Panasonic, LG, etc. would love to partner with Nintendo to make their own tablet and smartphone.

Only the Nintendo haters would say this is a bad idea.. and actually think Nintendo will be moving their main ips on to mobile.. when they already said "only new original games optimized for smart device functionality will be created"

I think the bottom line is this:

Nintendo wasn't able to stop people from ditching dedicated handhelds to go play on smart devices by ignoring smartphones. They threw damn well every one of their big IP at the 3DS and still nada ... they collapsed half from the DS and 3DS shipments were declining yearly at a disappointing rate on top of that. It's quite possible the next handheld would see further erosion and with their console line doing terrible, well you can guess where this is going ...

Weighing the risk/reward I think they finally felt the rewards of making iOS/Android software outweighed the risks given the way the sea tide was going against them.

Having a generation of kids grow up with no access to Mario/Zelda/Pikachu/Kirby/etc. I think was just too grim of a scenario for Nintendo to accept, so they caved and agreed to smartphone games.