North Texas Daily

Nicholas Friedman / Features Editor

Earlier today, Nintendo co-hosted a press conference with Japanese e-commerce juggernaut DeNA, detailing its plans for the future, including development into the mobile gaming industry, a new cross-platform connectivity service and plans for new console.

Ever since the Wii U launched in November of 2012, critics have panned Nintendo’s continued blue ocean strategy, where they seek to build upon a market that doesn’t exist or has little representation in the industry. While this worked with the Nintendo DS family of consoles (gamers that weren’t just adult men) and the original Wii (motion controls), the Wii U was released to a market already full of touch screens and gimmicks. So, in retaliation, posts filled the Internet pushing Nintendo to develop for mobile platforms iOS and Android and to bring Mario, Zelda and friends to our phones.

They’ve been quite distant on the matter, but that seemed to change today.

With the help of DeNA and its popular Mobage mobile platform Nintendo will develop “only new games optimized for smart device functionality.” Does this mean we’ll be jumping with Mario and catching Pokemon on our iPhones? Probably not, but it does open the door.

In addition to this working partnership, DeNA is developing a framework of online connectivity to work across Nintendo platforms, starting with the Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Wii U, and eventually moving to new platform currently codenamed “Nintendo NX.” Hopefully this brings it into close contention with Sony’s Playstation Network and Microsoft’s Xbox Live.

This framework will serve as the successor to the recently closed Club Nintendo, a service that rewarded players for purchasing and registering select games on Nintendo platforms.

Following these announcements, Nintendo’s stock prices skyrocketed almost 30%, potentially revealing investors’ opinions on this bold strategy.

While no additional details are available on the framework or the new console, expect announcements from Nintendo the closer we get to E3 2015 (June 16-18).

This news comes in the wake of Nintendo’s recent partnership with GungHo, a Japanese mobile game company, in which it made plans to release a Super Mario-themed version of it’s worldwide sensation “Puzzle & Dragons.”

Featured Image courtesy of Nintendo.