Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata insisted that the company would not release smartphone games in spite of declining market confidence in the brand.
In a recent interview with Nikkei, Iwata denied Nintendo would build smartphone games, saying if the company 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,” he said.
“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.”
The comments come after Nintendo’s shares fell by 5pc after its presentation at Tokyo Game Show 2011.
The games company revealed a number of new products related to the Nintendo 3DS, such as Mario Tennis and Monster Hunter 4, a slidepad attachment to add another analogue stick, the addition of 3D video capture and a pink 3DS aimed at women.
However, investors and analysts seemed unimpressed by the announcements and believe that Nintendo needs to win back the casual gaming audience it lost to mobile gaming.
Nintendo made a major cut the price of the 3DS in August, which saw US sales of the console rise by 260pc. Iwata said the console’s price would not be cut further in future.
