Porting classic games to smartphones isn't the way to go, says Nintendo

Speaking during its quarterly investor Q&A, Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima offered a glimpse at the company's smartphone strategy, touching on both the kind of games it wants to release in the future and the company's efforts to break into the Chinese mobile gaming market. 

As company representatives have stated in the past, Nintendo largely considers itself a newcomer to the mobile game side of the video game industry, having released only three titles in the past year with another due out at the end of November.

Despite this, Kimishima says the company has a clear plan for its mobile future. While Nintendo has a large library of both classic games and notable properties that could be re-released for mobile, Kimishima says that straight classic ports are still not in the cards for Nintendo's future mobile lineup.

"Nintendo is a newcomer for the smart-device business, and there is still much we have to learn," said Kimishima. "Nintendo has a large stock of valuable IP characters and has developed many games. We cannot, however, simply port our existing games and IP to smart-device applications."

Instead, he says Nintendo continues to look at mobile as a way to introduce new players to some of Nintendo's charming characters and in-turn direct those players toward the non-mobile games in those series. 

"A lot of thought is going into what kind of games for smart devices will further our business and how we can continue to foster good relationships with our existing dedicated video game platform business," said Kimishima. "Among the various ideas, a primary concern is enabling our consumers to play on not only smart devices, but also our dedicated video game systems."