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Forums - Nintendo - Will Nintendo make a smartphone?

 

Will Nintendo ever make a smartphone?

Definitely, within 5 years 21 13.73%
 
Definitely, 5+ years from now 3 1.96%
 
It's possible, but not within 5 years 16 10.46%
 
It's possible within 5 years 33 21.57%
 
Very unlikely 59 38.56%
 
It's impossible, it will never happen 21 13.73%
 
Total:153
WorldBreakerHulk on 18 March 2015

The most I see Nintendo will be doing is partnership with either Samsung or Apple.



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Lawlight on 18 March 2015
SpokenTruth said:
MDMAlliance said:

I was on facebook earlier, and I saw someone talking about how Nintendo is going to be "developing" smartphone games now


Need to clarify this for you but Nintendo will not be developing smartphone games.  The deal is that they lend their IP to DeNA who will then develop smartphone games based on those IP.  Nintendo themselves are not making smartphone games now.


Where did you read that?



AZWification on 18 March 2015

I don't see Nintendo making a smartphone, at least not for now!



                
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ihatefatkatz on 18 March 2015

I don't see Nintendo dipping their fingers in the smart phone pie



hsrob on 18 March 2015
anghelcrayz said:
hsrob said:

Sony used to own 13% but they sold it off a year or so ago.

OT: Why would Nintendo even consider going up against the experience of Samsung and Apple and attempt to break into the smartphone market? Even Sony, who is a much, much bigger company, with a much broader portfolio, is losing that fight badly, despite having really great hardware.

They would need to ensure the device is affordable so they would likely be aiming at the lower end of the Android market, competing against the up and coming (huge) Chinese manufacturers and again, to what end? They would have the additional overhead of R+D of another new device that would require more frequent hardware refreshes than Nintendo are accustomed to, developing and maintaining an OS skin (no point just using stock Android) in line with Android updates, all the additional overhead of negotiating and managing telco deals/data plans and all the other bells and whistles that come with marketing and supporting smartphones.....all in an industiry where they have no experience.

All for the purposes of making, maybe, a small profit on the hardware and broadening the market they sell games to?  They will already be doing that by releasing to the App Store and Google Play and won't be limiting their audience to a particular hardware platform.

I honestly can't see what benefit there would be in it for them.

Well, in the same principle that Nintendo is in the console market where they obviously do not directly compete with Sony or Microsoft. They may be able to take advantage of a middle-end platform with Nintendo IPs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYCDDVSq_2o

I knew someone would say this :)

The difference with their games consoles though is that they are surviving, even profiting, in a niche that they know and understand very well, and where the competition, costs and complexities of doing business are well understood by them (even if some would argue otherwise)

Certainly, there's nothing to say they have to 'compete' with they big players, they could look for a similiar niche in the smartphone realm but it would still require SIGNIFICANT financial investment and expansion of their business into areas with which they aren't very familiar. Risk is high, competition is intense, they don't know the business that well, margins are low..... 

Conversely, selling software for smart devices requires relatively insignificant changes to their fundamental business. Initial risk is low and the reward is potentially very high.



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megaman79 on 18 March 2015

Nintendo I Pods FOR ALL!!



“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.

Asriel on 18 March 2015

It's much more likely Nintendo will, if this deal works, acquire DeNA and turn it into a subsidiary. DeNA's mobage service has 30 million users in Japan, and I think that's Nintendo's end-game here; a strong network platform that expands their audience through smart devices, and then retains a good chunk of those customers and their core base through consoles.



OdinHades on 18 March 2015

No. They would fail badly and the losses would be catastrophic. Just look at what Sony loses in that market despite good hardware and not so bad sales. You have to sell a shitload of phones to compete in the market. Or you have to be Apple.

I don't see it. They could ruin the whole company with such a move. It would be wiser to just cooperate with Samsung or Sony to bring a Nintendo Smartphone. But to start themselves at zero? No chance in hell. Apple would rip them apart with patent lawsuits like there's no tomorrow.



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Tachikoma on 18 March 2015

"nintendo wouldnt ever go mobile" is what everyone said, and bam, look where we are, frankly im not going to discount any outcome at this point.



JazzB1987 on 18 March 2015

TBH I would buy one.

I mean I have a 6 year old smartphone as my main phone and a Galaxy S2 as my whatsapp/internet phone.


If Nintendo would give those things some actual purpose (because right now the hardware in both is extremely overpowered for what they are supposed to do which is texting, making phone calls and web browsing)

I would actually buy a new phone instead of getting old ones from family members or buying pre owned ones.


For me the phone industry right now is "hey here have this totally fine working device that will be replaced by 10 new devices within the next 10 years and all of them can do the same important things as good as the first one and only nonsense that is so crappy implemented that its not even fun is just working a little bit better each time"