“A variety of media have written that Nintendo is cornered a number of times, but I do not think we were cornered at all.”
☆ NintendObs Event – Nintendo and DeNA Q&A.
Question:
I would like to ask both Mr. Iwata and Mr. Moriyasu whether I can assume that you have made this alliance because you felt a sense of crisis in approaching the smartphone game business by yourselves. Also to Mr. Moriyasu, I assume DeNA will continue making its own games in addition to the ones with Nintendo IP, but how will you differentiate them, if at all?
Answer:
Iwata:
A variety of media have written that Nintendo is cornered a number of times, but I do not think we were cornered at all. Needless to say, we are also aware that unless a company can deal with the rapidly changing world, it will face decline. But I would like to emphasize here that our alliance is not the result of a lack of better options for a cornered company.
When I first met with Mr. Moriyasu, I started to wonder if there was anything we could work on together. After that, the more we discussed, the more I realized that DeNA knew so many things that Nintendo did not. Mr. Moriyasu even said that DeNA did not mind remaining in the background as long as it could collaborate with Nintendo, and I came to realize that this could be a very productive opportunity as in comparison to what Nintendo might have been able to achieve by itself. We would be able to provide consumers with far more attractive offers in terms of entertainment experiences and speed.
This is why I just said that this is not a decision made out of a lack of options. In fact, Nintendo has received a number of proposals from a variety of companies. Among them, Nintendo has proactively chosen DeNA, and today, we are able to make this announcement. Mr. Moriyasu?
Moriyasu:
From DeNA’s point of view, the app game market for smart devices including smartphones is precisely what we have been focusing on. We recently created a hit game app, and we have a very good sense that we will be successful in this area. We evaluated what options are out there in order to expand our business and presence even further, and we thought the best one is to form a partnership with Nintendo. Nintendo has extremely powerful IP, and leveraging this IP will be very effective to grow our business even more. It makes a lot of sense to us, and we are ecstatic that we are able to form this alliance.
In the second part of your question, you asked what we plan to do with our original IP in addition to the new collaborative IP titles. Throughout DeNA’s history, we have always worked with many different companies to develop games that use their IP. Strong IP is very effective in drawing users’ attention. So, yes, we will continue to co-develop titles based on various kinds of IP.
At the same time, we also have a strong desire to create our own, original IP. And we will work on that in parallel. We will actually be making much more than one or two titles per year. Among the multiple titles we are going to develop, some of them will be our own IP titles that we develop completely on our own, and some will be collaborative.
— Nintendo Co., Ltd.
DeNA Co., Ltd.
Business and Capital Alliance Announcement
Source: Nintendo JP.
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