While we’ve heard Nintendo’s side of the story when it comes to their partnership with DeNA and leveraging their IPs for the mobile market, DeNA West CEO Shintaro Asako has had a lot to say since securing the deal and announcing it earlier today. According to Asako, the alliance with Nintendo will help position DeNA to become the number one smartphone gaming company in the world, dethroning Supercell and King, makers of Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga.
Currently DeNA isn’t in the top ten list of companies focused on mobile, but thanks to this lucrative deal with Nintendo that could all change very soon. The company is number 8 on the list in Japan alone and according to Asako, the mobile firm has been courting Nintendo since 2010 in an attempt to get the big N on board with mobile gaming.
Internally, we had a lot of strategic meetings. The one big solution was always that there’s a giant IP holder in the market that hasn’t stepped into the smartphone environment. Really, the reason they were convinced that they wanted to work with us was that we were so determined to work with them that we have really been talking to them since 2010. Yes, we were talking to them for a long, long time.
Finally, Nintendo became ready to do this. And we were ready the whole time.
While the announcement of Nintendo partnering to enter the mobile space may seem like a surprise to many, it’s not really surprising to hear the company has been courting the idea since 2010. In the five years since that date, the mobile landscape has exploded and by 2017, it’s expected to be a $40 billion dollar industry. There’s no surprise that Nintendo wants a piece of that pie.