Nintendo’s first smartphone games become free-to-play

All smartphone games that Nintendo and DeNa are currently developing together will be free-to-play, says the CEO of DeNa. Most likely, this means that the companies want to generate revenue from in-app sales.

Isao Moriyasu, CEO of DeNa, spoke about the games during the presentation of the half-year results, according to the American business newspaper The Wall Street Journal. Nintendo previously announced that the collaboration should culminate in five mobile games until March 2017. The CEO would not say how many of those games are currently in development.

The first of the five apps is Miimito. Nintendo announced this iOS app, which will be released in March 2016, at the end of October. Initially, Nintendo said the first smartphone app would be released in 2015. Moreover, that is actually not a game, but a chat application.

DeNa can use the characters from Nintendo games thanks to the collaboration. When both companies announced the partnership, they said that there will be no ports of existing Nintendo games, in all cases they will be new games.

It is unknown how extensive the new free-to-play games will be. While DeNa has not made any statements about in-app purchases, it is highly likely that users will be able to make payments in the app. Virtually all free-to-play games, including DeNa’s, operate on that model.