Somethings worth noting:

Dena has their own platafform(know as mobage). In terms of features, we can expect something similar. Maybe you guys that have a smartphone can share yours experience with it?

Dena will not create something to replace nintendo network, they will replace club nintendo first and foremost. People expecting crosssave, cross-buy and same account on multiple consoles will get disapointed. Nintendo said however, that they were working on something better for nintendo network.

Dena will be like the publisher of nintendo games on mobile space. Nintendo is making the games first and foremost, but things like handling app-purchases will all be sided on Dena. Not sure of who will do the advertising, but considering that nintendo wants the app to work as a advertisiment, i think that advertisiment will be on Dena side.

Neither pokemon shuflle or pokemon go are the game on what nintendo is working. Those are works of the pokemon company first and foremost. So, we are yet to see what nintendo really have in store for us.

It was pretty clear that Dena and nintendo wanted different things while iwata was in charge. Nintendo wanted smartphones more like companion apps, but Dena really wanted the app as product by themselves. Not sure how this thing evolved since iwata's passing. By this i think that is at least secure to say that estabilished IP's will be used.

There is no way in hell Nintendo is launching a unified platform where you can play one game across multiple consoles without having cross buy/save/play and having the same acount to link them all together. That's not even speculation anymore. DeNA is already confirmed to be working on the MP, the MP is already confirmed to be more than just a rewards program, and Nintendo already confirmed that the MP would be the core part of the NX platform, and the MP is already confirmed to use one account. All of that is confirmed.

Will the MP replace the Nintendo Network? Doubt it. Buy it will absolutely be structurally integrated into it. The MP, for example, will likely use your NNID.

DeNA will not publish Nintendo mobile games. Nintendo will. DeNA is helping with the structure, and is likely helping Nintendo try and cultivate its own marketplace on mobile. Itawa absolutely never alluded to wanting their mobile games to be companion apps. That's a fan theory. Nintendo and DeNA are completely on the same page. They both want the games to stand alone as their own products. They just want those products to spread brand awareness for Nintendo's IP, which will be good for their hardware as a result. 500m people playing amazing Nintendo games tailor made on their smart phones is the advertizement.

It also needs a much more powerful OS. Right now, it isn't even remotely seemless to post anything to miiverse.

This. You know there's a big problem when the 3DS takes a full minute just to boot the Miiverse application, while the Wii U takes a good portion of a minute to do the same (but in games that do integrate the service properly, it launches quickly but not seamlessly).

Miiverse has a lot of potential, just really held back by its interface and hardware and its de-emphasis of users (users can't post on their own Activity Feeds anymore).

I don't really think I buy the "it's an advertisment for Nintendo games!" ... millions and millions of people play Angry Birds on their smart devices too, they don't suddenly buy game consoles or portables just for that.

Ditto for Sonic ... the Sonic mobile games have been hugely successful in terms of tens of millions of downloads, but Sonic console/dedicated portable games are not selling one ioata better.

If anything I think if you give people "free" versions of something, even if they're not as "good" as the "real" games, so long as they're good fun, for a lot of people they're more likely to just say "yeah but I already have this other Pokemon game on my iPhone, I don't need a Nintendo portable" as an example.

And honestly Nintendo I think knows that full well, it was just more of a "if you can't beat them, join them" call on their part, they know damn well they stand to make a fortune off mobile games, so it didn't make sense just sit on the sidelines forever and do nothing while their hardware marketshare decreased either way. Might as well make money off smart devices if they're cannibalizing large chunks of your audience.

If a person likes those apps so much that they then feel compelling to buy a seperate $200-$300 piece of hardware just to play those franchises in more depth, that's more like a side benefit I think.

Mobile will be Nintendo's no.1 revenue generator in a few years IMO, above their traditional game business. I think they know this too, they didn't make that decision without doing profit projections, demographic breakdowns of smart device users, etc. etc. 

A lot, if not all, of that will be fixed with the NX, since that is what it's built for.

I think "advertizing" is a misleading way to word it. The goal is to spread brand awareness. It's not there to say "play Mario on consoles," but to say "Mario is cool and all your friends know Mario and think he's cool, too." That widened brand awareness will lead to better sales simply on the basis that there will be more people in the world that to whom Nintendo's IP are immediately relevant to, but that's the extent of it.

And again, I think its more about spreading Nintendo's brand as a whole than raising the sales of software. From this POV, Angry Birds is a perfect example. So is something like Minecraft. Those are two of the most culturally relevant franchises today, from any media. Their brand has been spread far and wide, and now they are titanic. They have toys, AB is getting a movie, kids wear their shirts and hats, and Nintendo wants that back. That immediate cultural relevance and brand awareness that they had in the NES/SNES era. The "games are Nintendo," everyone cares about Mario Nintendo. They want people talking about them again, and in a good way.

I think that anyone looking at mobile as merely an advertizement wing is completely missing the point. Nintendo wants to make good mobile games so that lots more people have good experiences with Nintendo as a brand and the mass market's awareness of Nintendo as a brand is raised. They want people to be talking about Nintendo games with the same relevancy as Minecraft and Angry Birds and Frozen and Star Wars and every other brand that isn't hidden behind a $300 experience barrier.

That's why I compare Nintendo's mobile decision to their decision to open their IP to TV shows and movies, starting the N-Box loot crate-like service, Amiibo, and the theme park deal with Universal. Donkey Kong wasn't in Pixels to sell Wii U's. He was in Pixels to make Donkey Kong more relevant today.

I think there is a difference with Sonic though. Those Sonic games have done nothing for his brand, because they aren't very good mobile games. They were successful, but not Angry Birds successful. Nintendo wants that. Again, Nintendo isn't expecting the hundreds of millions of people who play all their mobile games to to get up and buy an NX, but the positive mainstream relevance and the new found familiarity with their brand will be a huge factor in the success of their platform.

It's not about the money, though. Obviously they stand to make money, but this decision was made because it is in line with their future plans. Their monetization isn't even built around maximum profits. It's built around maximum discoverability. It's absolutely not an "if you can't beat them" situation. They've figured out a way to fit mobile into their plans for the future, and the goal behind their platform. I definitely don't think mobile will overtake their core gaming business, though. I think the NX will be massively successful.

I think all of this stuff they've been planning the last two years are going to absolutely blow up starting 2017. It starts with the membership program this month and mobile, but the full swing will happen in 2017. I'd be money you're going to see the first Mario movie that year, and that's when their brand absolutely explodes back into prevalance again. You'll have the mobile in full swing, the membership program will already be widely adopted because of the association with the smash hit mobile games, the NX will be out and gaining steam, a CGI Mario movie will likely come out at the end of that year which will be huge if handled correctly, we might see some Nintendo TV shows return, solid details on the Nintendo themepark will likely be out by that point, etc. It's going to be monumental.

I think it's more likely the mobile games themselves will end up making more money for Nintendo than their traditional game business. As for movies, great. Should have done that 10 years ago, but better late than never. 

With DeNA, I've actually heard their mobage service is riddled with a lot of complaints from users. They're nothing special as a company, they're one (of many) companies that make/host a bunch of shitty/microtransaction riddled smart phone games. 

My feeling is Nintendo chose them primarily because they're small enough of a company that they can't bully/influence/potentially buy-out Nintendo, so Nintendo notorious for not working well in partnerships and having to have full control likely chose them for that. And they're Japanese. 

They would never work with a company like a Google or a Samsung or an Apple that could actually really be a game changer for them in this capacity. 

If these games are just "advertisements" why use DeNA at all? Sega and Square-Enix are quite capable of making smartphone apps no problem and Nintendo is bigger than both of them. Nintendo needs DeNA for another reason. Nintendo/DeNA are going to nickle and dime people to death with microtransactions ... that's what Nintendo wants, they want 5-6 smartphone app "cash cow" games like Candy Crush and Game of War that bring in a constant stream of revenue. This is about making money and getting in that trend of big money smartphone apps, not about marketing primarily IMO. That's just a secondary benefit that sounds a lot better in PR terms than "we want to fuck you with constant microtransactions". 

They don't need DeNA to make smartphone games that would act as advertisments for Nintendo consoles. They could do that easy and let people download them for free. They need DeNA to make BIG money apps though because those apps are constantly updated with crap to buy. 

I also think there probably was a large contingent of people at Nintendo (Miyamoto included) who were against the move to smartphone apps and resisted it for as long as possible, but they lost that vote once negative financials on the Wii U and 3DS started to roll in. 

Like I  said, I don't, but no point arguing further over that. As for movies, you're 100% right. They should have done it 10 years ago. But like you said, better late than never.

I think DeNA is helping more with the structure than the actual games.  As in, they're doing the backend stuff.  The actual platform of mobage is well designed, so DeNA was a good choice there. Nintendo are the ones who will handle the everything from gameplay to micro transactions, so DeNA's weakness there will have no effect. Expect monetization like the ones found in Steal Divers and Rusty.

i think that those played a factor as well, yes. But you don't allow a company to buy a stake in you if their only value is being small and controllable. They don't need Google or Apple to accomplish this.

I literally wrote that whole post saying they aren't advertisements.

Nintendo already confirmed that that is not their business model with the mobile games. They done want whales. They want to have every consumer spend a little as opposed to a few consumers spending a lot. You're not listening to anything they've said on the matter. That's the opposite of nickel and diming. DeNA is their for the back end stuff when it comes to mobile.

I don't. I think the way they're handling mobile goes so against typical cash cow mobile tactics that they'get been planning how to capitalize on this for a while.

The "back end" that DeNA provides is basically micro-transactions. Mobage is driven by "Mobacoins", a virtual currency that you use to make in-app purchases.

This is all about making money, Nintendo is just not going to put it so bluntly, but they didn't invest over $100 million in DeNA for trivial little things they could do on their own.

They needed an outside partner if they want to have highly monetized big money apps like Game of War, Clash of Clans, etc. Those games require constant new things to spend money on and an interface to manage all that money that will be coming in on a daily basis.

Their traditional game platforms have become too unpredictable and boom/bust of a business for Nintendo to rely on completely, they want a small number of "big money" smartphone apps that can provide the company with constant revenue in case there are down stretches/financial quarters that happen in the future.

That's what this is all about IMO.