Nintendo bows to investor pressure, announces plans to bring games to iOS, other platforms

Sometimes you’ve got to do what the investors tell you to do, even if it means bringing the crown jewels to other platforms.

Still, the upside is that it brings Mario to your iOS device.

Nintendo announced on Tuesday that it has partnered with Japanese mobile game maker DeNA to jointly develop games for smartphones, tablets and PCs, meaning that new titles based on iconic franchises such as Mario, Pokemon and Zelda could soon be available on devices such as iPhone, iPad and Mac. Nintendo will purchase a 10% stake in DeNA for US$182 million as part of a cross-shareholding deal.

Nintendo consistently refused to license its intellectual property to other platforms, fearing that doing so may threaten its traditional, console-based business model. Nevertheless, as the mobile gaming industry has grown into an estimated US$25 billion market, and competitors such as Sony begin making more games available on other consoles, it appears that Nintendo has caved into the pressure.

Nintendo and DeNA will team up to develop a “multi-device membership service for the global market,” available next fall for PCs, smartphones, tablets and also Nintendo gaming consoles, according to the report. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said at a news conference on Tuesday that he hopes the service will allow the company to reach hundreds of millions of new users, while the company remains committed to its own lineup of gaming devices.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

Via MacRumors and the Wall Street Journal